The Sentence – Live
Is a forty six thousand word single unpunctuated sentence that is entirely monosyllabic.
THE SENTENCE, hailed by the British Library as a grime Under Milk Wood for the 21st Century, is a unique poly-genre literary voice for the Anthropocene. Simultaneously a hyper-modern horror story, an extremely black comedy, a satire, a crime novel, science fiction, urban social realism and a prose poem. It concerns a prisoner who is given a drug which slows down time.
THE SENTENCE has toured the country being read nonstop by groups of readers, containing the likes of Alan Moore, Jeff Young, Alan Cox, Robin Ince, Sean McCann, Frances Thorburn and Gavin Mitchell, who have all given voice to the book during the tour. These performances were conducted by Daisy Campbell and Moksha. Break out readers meant there was no escape during the four hour performances.
THE SENTENCE has had a profound effect on many who have engaged with it:
“The Sentence is original because of the effect that reading it has on you. Its trance-inducing monosyllabic beat is irresistible, a literary four-four preventing you from leaving the page or the mind of the book’s narrator. No other style of writing has been able to take such high and lofty ideas and punch them down into the base of your lizard brain, where they belong…
The Sentence is the sort of cultural bar raising that we so desperately need right now.”
John Higgs, from The Quietus
“The Sentence is a shamanic spell as much as a story…”
Robin Ince, in the Big Issue.
“Probably the most innovative novelist in the UK”
Russ Litten, via twitter
“this is the best thing I’ve ever heard about prison and UK general insanity… I went to a reading of it and I almost cried with love, hate and ‘fuck… someone really gets it”
Carl Cattermole, (The Prison Survival Guide, Penguin) – from Minor Lit
“An intravenous rush of monosyllables that runs according to the clock of an extremely Long Now, Ali Fruish’s The Sentence is a breathless and head-first synaptic plunge into austere and yet excitingly fresh territory, effortlessly blending informed social protest, literary experiment and existential science fiction/horror from its first chivvying word to its single and memorable full stop. Compassionate, ingenious and more than modern, this book casts new and starling light on the idea of doing time. Experience it in a single sitting like its guinea-pig narrator, as a not-so-short sharp shock, and it will stay with you forever like a penitentiary tattoo. A bold, bar-rattling gem.”
Alan Moore
“It has literary echoes of the Bible, of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, of James Joyce’sFinnegan’s Wake, of Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell, and of James Kelman’sHow Late It Was How Late, and the dramatic effect of Beckett’s beguiling word-cascades in Not I and Play. All of these works play with the idea of fragmented consciousness and the word as spell.”
Douglas O’Dea, The Sentence by Alistair Fruish, A live reading at The Space, Glasgow.
| Audience feedback from THE SENTENCE live reading in Glasgow: |
| “A remarkable experience! One of the most amazing things about it is the way that time changed. The four hours felt like no time to me. Remarkable. Remarkable.” |
| “Mind blowing. It’s amazing and time did move strangely. I really didn’t believe that it was four hours. I thought it was an hour, or two hours. It went so fast. It’s amazing, Beautiful. And funny. So imaginative. “ |
| “Surpassed my expectations… I have never experienced a book in this way before. It’s a novel experience, a unique experience.“ |
| “Incredible. Really quite shocking, and moving, and beautiful, and full on, and intense, and transporting you kind of journey through life, time, sound history, the past, the future, it’s everything, it’s amazing. Absolutely incredible.” |
Listen to Daisy Campbell and Alistair Fruish interviewed by Ed Baxter on Resonance FM – about the live performances of The Sentence.