n.b. A ‘no star’ rating for books I review does not imply criticism—I rarely give ratings, as giving stars is an unhelpfully blunt instrument and all too often involves comparing apples with oranges.returnreturnOlivia Laing, in her 'Guardian' review in 2020, noted the “precise and estranging fluency” of Harrison’s writing. It is a perfect tool for depicting uncertain negotiation of uncertain worlds. returnreturnShaw, one of the main characters, starts the novel coming to (incomplete) rest after motion: he has had a breakdown, and has just moved house. He meets Victoria in the place where he has come, if not to rest, at least to a stop of sorts, and almost immediately she leaves, moving house in her turn. His mother has dementia, and takes pleasure in tearing up family photographs, destroying memories. Victoria’s mother has died and Victoria is moving north to Shropshire to live in the house her mother left behind. returnreturn'Sunken Land' is a story that has key absences: Shaw’s sense of distance from himself, Victoria’s deceased mother, the repeated failures to communicate. Shaw and Victoria seem barely to have come together before they separate. There are significant gaps in knowledge, too: the true business of the person who gives Shaw a job, the reason that copies of 'The Water Babies' keep turning up, what is the source of the voices Shaw can hear through his wall. returnreturnThis makes it sound as though 'Sunken Land' is about the uncanny, or weird experiences, and that does it the injustice of pinning it down, but weirdness is inherent in the novel like hair on an arm, giving it distinction; the novel would look odd without it, like a face without eyebrows. It is not about them, they are factors in and consequences of life. What is most memorable is not so much the strange occurrences and recurrences, the unsettling glimpses of disturbing things, but the maps of the characters’ diffident interactions with the world, both familiar and defamiliarized, maps that are built up with such subtlety, and with so unique a literary palette, that it is almost startling to stand back and see how immaculate and strong is the resulting fictional reality. returnreturnIn a 2017 interview with Heather Marshall, Harrison said that he looks for the ‘I don’t know why you did that’ moment at the endings of his own short stories, and there are plenty of these in 'Sunken Land' too, keeping the reader on their toes, keeping the prose too dynamic and complex to be burdened down by the shifting, often gloomy, atmosphere; it is a gloomy world, but the weirdness and Harrison’s remarkable prose make it almost rebelliously suffused with resilience.