Philip was getting old.  His face was getting wrinkled, his hairline was moving backwards and he was on the waiting list for a knee operation.  It was his day off and he didn’t have any plans, so he ate his breakfast in front of the computer screen and asked himself “What do I want to do?”

A grand existential crisis, a surreal Bulgakovian satire, or simply A Quiet Disaster?   We follow Philip on his day off work as he struggles to find meaning and happiness through the everyday decisions that make up a day.  Why did he cross that street?  Does he keep walking, or shelter from the rain?  What will make him happy?  And just why is that dog wearing glasses?

“The great appeal of Alex Potts’s A Quiet Disaster is that on the one hand not very much actually occurs and yet, conversely, it’s in that same triviality of happenstance and routine that whole worlds of stress and despair are opened up to its protagonist, the rather unambitious and apathetic Philip. Potts provides us with a somewhat passive everyperson in his central character; a listless, dispirited loner whose sole aim on his day off work is to find something worthwhile with which to occupy his time. It’s his abject failure to do so – and the small calamities that befall him on his meanderings – that account for the quiet disaster of the book’s title.”

Andy Oliver - Broken Frontier

The printed edition of this has sold out, but it’s still available digitally from Avery Hill Publishing.