Test Signal (ed. Nathan Connolly)

Review by Claire Carroll

Test Signal—Dead Ink and Bloomsbury’s bold new anthology—is envisaged as ‘snapshot of Northern writing at a moment in time’. This radical, hyper-contemporary approach is reflected both in Nathan Connolly’s editorial selection—which platforms both established and emerging writers—and in the subject matter of the stories themselves.

Lara Williams’ Bella is an eponymous Influencer who is ‘leaking a golden, viscous liquid from every orifice’. In her story, Williams’ skilfully renders the imagery of influencer culture (trips to Dubai, pastel-coloured interiors, dental supplement sponsorships), alongside characters that are creepily one-dimensional, as if they too are images. A boyfriend with whom she has ‘great brand synergy’; a deadpan mother, and a deteriorating pharmacist, all seem slightly out of reach. Bella is deteriorating too; the leaking continues, unexplained and unresolved. There’s leaking too in Naomi Booth’s Clean Work, in which a single parent grapples with a rat infestation that becomes an obsession. Like Bella, Booth’s protagonist is isolated in her affliction and, in the end, leaking fluids.

Leaking indicates that something isn’t right; that something is breaking. This theme of impending breakage—of things falling apart—runs throughout the collection. Deteriorating minds and bodies appear in Matt Wesolowski’s Wabbit, whose protagonist’s lurid night-time trip through Newcastle ends in traumatic violence; and in Amy Stewart’s Making Monsters, where a holidaymaker transforms into a vengeful gorgon. There are deteriorations in the landscape too: Andrew Michael Hurley’s opening essay meditates on the encroachment by developers of a beloved patch of woodland, and what this means for our common green spaces.

In the concluding piece, Adam Farrer offers a bleak, darkly comic meditation on the erosion of his clifftop hometown. A different type of bleakness weaves its way through Tawseef Khan’s formally deft, chillingly bureaucratic Asylum Decision in which a woman’s asylum claim is met with suspicion by the state. This story is perhaps the most brutal of the collection; its stark realism depicting the deterioration of hope itself.

The snapshot of northern writing that Test Signal offers is often one of precarity, deterioration and loss. It is arguably therefore, a searingly accurate reflection of the turmoil left by the pandemic. But there are moments of humour, beauty, and tenderness within the collection too; landscapes and characters that are expansive, warm and varied. In this way, Test Signal serves as poignant testament to the wide-ranging and multifaceted array of contemporary northern writing, defying a London-centric publishing industry, and reflecting, head-on, the time in which we live.

Test Signal is published by Bloomsbury/Dead Ink, 8th July 2021