Stand Clear Doors Closing

by: Shane Conroy

Published by: Caged Media, Australia

Reviewed by Ernest Dempsey

The first thing you notice on Shane Conroy's Stand Clear Doors Closing is a warning that the publication has some offensive material and only befits adult readership. Maybe our Australian friend is reviving moral values that we really need in our times because the book has almost no such themes. What he has included is less offending than most humor books that are selling without such warnings.

Stand Clear Doors Closing is a short book of 60 pages of humorous fiction; a good reading in modern experimental fiction. All stories are a page or two in length, all in first person, telling the subjective experiences of a single character, Joseph Holden, whose consciousness seems to be trapped in the 'moment.'

Attempting to make sense of his encounters with different situations, Holden asks some defying questions and, at one place, makes a blasphemy (what we may call an adult theme). But most of the book is mere thinking. Consider Joseph Holden mulling over: 'I wish I could understand why I didn't care about being run over or why the dog was dead or why rats can't do trigonometry.'

At places, Conroy's stories slip beyond the world of reality and portray bizarre creatures interacting with the narrator. The feeling is that of one's fantasies gone awry. The narrator's tone implies a hangover with quasi-poetic repetitions. At the end of the book, you may feel strange and start thinking about giving it another reading.