Chris Carse Wilson: Fray ★★★★☆
In Chris Carse Wilson’s powerful debut, we’re plunged into an alternately magnificent and terrifying Highland landscape where a nameless narrator hunts for their lost father. He has gone missing following his wife’s death and a hurtful argument with our protagonist. This search leads to an abandoned cottage, where hundreds of jumbled notes written by their father over a period of months reveal his mental disintegration: does he believe his wife is actually still alive or is he trying to somehow find her spirit out there in nature?
In a hazy confusion of grief and loss, the narrator starts to piece together their father’s movements. But consumed by this mission, they too begin to fight against internal voices, struggling to differentiate what is real and what is imagined. Carse Wilson shows assured mastery in his portrayal of landscape, contrasting the beauty of endless vistas with the clawing claustrophobia of a dark forest and remote cottage, as well as the fear generated by night-time in this wilderness.
But his depictions of grief and mental health are where Fray really resonates, as the narrator struggles to cope with what life has thrown at them, trying to maintain a façade of normality while inside a storm brews. Carse Wilson’s inventive prose starkly mirrors his protagonist’s emotions; the fracturing of their mind as the hunt for answers escalates is exquisitely drawn. In one particularly memorable scene, the author tracks a panic attack’s progression; it’s a manic, heart-pounding and electric piece of writing.
This is a startling debut, with a clever structure which flits between the narrator’s first-person account, extracts from the father’s disturbing notes, and adds a third more sinister voice. There are also gentle flickers of love among the pain, like shards of sunlight penetrating the dense forest canopy. Fray haunts the mind long after its last page has been turned.