Here is a personal confession. I don’t read nearly enough books, especially when the task of producing another edition of ‘Egremont Today’ sits on me with a weight of lead, and when Beckermet novelist Frederick Lightfoot brought me his latest novels, ‘Cry’ and ‘Swans’ in a single volume my first reaction was to think they might have to wait for the next edition. By the time I had read the first chapter of ‘Cry’, however, I was utterly captivated by his lucid narrative and unflinching exploration of the human mind, and the task of editing had to wait.
I don’t want to mislead potential readers. If you don't like being challenged by an author, you may curl up comfortably with a cosy romance but you probably won’t tackle a novel by Frederick Lightfoot. Utterly uncompromising in his search for truth, he denies his readers the easy consolation of happy endings, the moral security offered by wholly admirable characters, or the allurement of erotic love scenes. Like all serious writers, he undermines our certainty about ourselves and the world we live in.

'Cry' and 'Swans', the two short novels contained in his latest book, contrast sharply in their technique. Whereas 'Cry' is presented by a narrator who has access to the secret places of every character’s mind, 'Swans' speaks to us through the voices of all the main characters, revealing through their own words their insecurities, their delusions and their brutal prejudices. However, both novels relentlessly explore troubled and deranged minds and expose the fallible judgements of the professionals who assume the duties of psychiatric care.
A mental hospital ironically called 'Farmhouse' and described by its unit manager as "a very happy place", is the portentous setting for 'Cry', which explores the different ways in which people may be imprisoned. It is not only the patients who are confined by the prejudices of their carers or captors. The professionals, too, are in very different ways trapped by past experience which drives some to the brink of madness. Characters are never more alientated from one another than when they are having sex, in scenes where the unflinching detail may be obscene but never enticing or pornographic. The most complacent and deluded believes that the mind can be controlled by neurological engineering, and the most truthful and troubled confesses that he does not know "what the hell goes on in people's heads." The ending of the novel strikingly echoes "Great Expectations", in which Magwitch's imprisonment and deportation is a metaphor for the subtler ways in which every other character is alienated or confined. To be truthful the connection had eleuded me until I recognised a disturbing parody of Pip's revelation to Magwitch of the life course of his enchanting daughter, Estella. Lightfoot pursues his angry theme that it is the inflexibility of society that induces madness while professionals pathologise every aspect of human life by creating labels like Attention Deficit Syndrome.
The central character of 'Swans' is a psychiatrist who is unaware of the breakdown that every member of his family is facing. Dr Stuart comfortably embodies every liberal attitude but sets himself apart from all the people he thinks he cares for, observing from a distance through binoculars, alienating them through his tone, and triumphantly inducing false memory in his patients. Personally he is contrasted with the traveller or "gypo", Jakes, who had something authentic before it was snatched away from him by judgemental society. His view of life is contrasted with the harsh reality of another watcher, Trevaskis, who bitterly denies that his impartial observation of the swans, which he is powerless to protect, can have any value.

Lightfoot is himself a watcher, whose remorseless gaze may alienate readers who seek easy gratification, but his compelling narrative and penetrating vision will be irresistible to those who want to explore the world they live in and the secret places of their own minds.