The thematic sequel to Adjective Narcissism, within God Metaphor Carey focuses his interest on religion, and the relationships between an author and a deity. The unnamed protagonist returns, recovering from Carey's attentions during the first narrative, and seeks absolution for the thoughts of a greater figure, a figure he rebels against but ultimately obeys; as though he ever had a choice.From a student flat high above Liverpool to a hospital ward, Carey's self-obsession makes a st...

Solpadol II continues the Broken Polemic with humanity at its core; humanity and its desperate, aching need for love and for poetry and for all the things in between. But there is no poetry in small-town England, save the poetics we dig from our own souls.Solpadol II returns us to the world of minor drugs, drink and broken hearts that characterise Carey's universe. The protagonist, holding down a steady job, struggles to balance everything at once – his drinking, his hidden drugs, h...

One of the last Homo Sapiens, Cedric Healy is trapped. Trapped by his good job, with its high prospects and potential, trapped by the ghosts of a personal morality in a world evolved beyond the need for one, and trapped by his self-destructive refusal to worship the Money-God.He believes that freedom lies within himself, in the separation of the body and the mind, in his own eccentric madness, the distance between what he classifies as the self and the other. Everything he believes...

Robert Amuigh's brother is dead. Robert Amuigh's brother is dead and it has no meaning.The Burden follows Amuigh's experience of his brother's funeral and his innate refusal to perform in the social game. From the bedroom of the apartment he shares with his girlfriend to the small cell that society deems necessary, Amuigh struggles to maintain a sense of self in a world designed to crush it.A short narrative that struggles to cement the blurred line between identity, mental i...

Written in one night and, since, unedited, Carey tells the story of a man becoming lost. Within The Desperate Light, he captures the spirit of the truly desperate man, the embodiement of a soulless thing searching for something he is destined never to find. Once again, Carey eschews simple exposition in favour of a character's madness.A short story from the writer of Adjective Narcissism and God Metaphor.

Mychandra follows five days in the life of a man suffering from a modern mental illness. Set against the backdrop of the last General Election, it looks at the Northern town of Wigan through a blurred vision that combines realism with medical insanity.

Solpadol is a story about self-destruction, drug dependency and unrequieted love.Taking place over the course of a single day, Carey returns to his Broken Polemic series with another semi-confessional, semi-fictional piece of work that works to blur the lines between fiction and reality. This time, love is the overwhelming theme of the narrative, with much of the day revolving around a single conversation between the unnamed protagonist and the woman he used to love.Solpado...

Within Adjective Narcissism, Carey pushes the boundaries of typically held beliefs, abusing the nature of his broken protagonist to question himself, the obligatory narcissim his profession demands and the world around him. A complex portrayal of life through a young man's eyes, Carey rejects the literary advice given to him in favour of exposing his own individuality; an individuality he laments as a falsehood.An author's exercise in self-obsession matching self-loathing, a single...