Book Review: Antidote Illusions (A Tristan Grieves Fragment) by Erik Hofstatter

Liene, the girl with hair colour of angry Etna. Somewhere between 800 and 1000 Celsius. And a much hotter temperament—is gone.

Tristan Grieves. The enigma peeler and ferryman on watered time is moving oars through rough months.

Boomerang throws TG into an ex-serotonin chaser’s house that smells like stolen passports. A flesh horizon where knives sail into. A nicotine party for a ghost exit, where a she-golem built from old betrayals waits. But what do you do when even the sun don’t want you?

Antidote Illusions is my second visit to this gloomy and seedy world where Tristan Grieves operates having met the man originally in the book Soaking in Strange Hours. I remember not fully feeling like I understood either him, or his purpose, at the end of that first story so a revisit will hopefully peel back a few further layers. The first book ended with the apparent death of Tristan’s soulmate/addiction – Liene and this second one picks up after that with Tristan reminiscing about her. Something he tends to do quite regularly throughout the book.

We are talking a short story here and it is very short so there is not a huge plot to discuss or review. It feels more like a prequel, laying foundations for a bigger thing to come. I don’t know that to be Erik Hofstatter’s aim, but that is how it feels. Like fragments. At it’s most simple, Tristan appears to now be a pimp or roadman character who appears to have a reputation for just getting things done. Tristan’s boss of sorts, a person known as Boomerang, a plaything of Liene’s from the first story who Tristan was hired to find, calls him up and asks him to attend another location in Shoreditch. Upon his attendance, he finds the dead body of that locations pimp, Kamil, and words scrawled in blood on the wall.

“In Pimp Blood, She Remembers Hate”

This phrase hits home to Tristan as something he has heard only once before, and that was from Liene. But Liene is dead, right? As Tristan ponders the fate of Liene, and Katerina, he finds himself holding another cryptic conversation this time with the “angel” Sirin. A conversation that, at least for me, does nothing more than fog up the already unclear links between a maybe not dead Liene, Katerina and Tristan.

Back with Boomerang, and the actual reason Tristan has been brought to Shoreditch sees him meet a young piece of fresh pimp meat called Reyna. His job being to now look after her. To integrate her. There may be more to Reyna than initially meets the eye, but that is just an assumption at this stage as this is where Antidote Illusions closes out.

Soaking in Strange Hours stuck heavily in my mind due to the poetic use of language and Antidote Illusions is equally poetic, metaphoric and cryptic. No single sentence of this story is given away lightly. You want it, then work for it. This is a complex read and that can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing as the wonderful language takes on almost a life of it’s own, adding even more layers to the well described world and characters. A curse in that it is not always easy to follow, not always clear what the intention is and sometimes requires you to stop the story, spend time analysing the preceding sentence before moving forwards again thus breaking any sense of flow to the story.

This the second story I have read from Erik Hofstatter and is also the second story I have had to reread multiple times as, when finished, I realised I had little appreciation of what had actually gone on in the story. Every simple action, every thought is delivered with complexity. Take this as an example.

Standard writing: “He lit his cigarette”

Erik Hofstatter: “He Zippo scorched his fag”

The language is equally wonderful and occasionally frustrating. Frustrating in that I feel it is more complex than the overall story at this point, what with the fragments being so short. There is depth to the characters, there is depth to the city but two short fragments so far have not revealed a whole lot of the bigger picture. So, when I think of Erik Hofstatter, is it Tristan Grieves or Liene that jumps into my mind? No, it’s the use of English language and I am undecided as to whether that is a good thing or not.

What I do know is that I love words so for me, I thoroughly enjoyed breaking down the language and gaining clear visuals from them. I enjoyed the story and still find Tristan to be a very interesting, yet unlikeable, character and I want to know more. I enjoy the darkness within the pages, the pace of the story and I do find it to be strangely addictive to read. Antidote Illusions is another extremely captivating read and well worth your time. If nothing else, you are going to be blown away by the unique style of writing.

Grab a copy of Antidote Illusions from Amazon, here.

Erik Hofstatter Links

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