All of This Unreal Time

by Max Porter, Cillian Murphy (foreword)

What would you say if you had one ideal chance to speak yourself, to make a language that spoke across time to those you have loved, to those you have wronged, to all those countless human and non-human lives that have intersected and impacted on yours, with or without your knowledge?

MAX PORTER'S All of This Unreal Time takes this idea—the poetic concept of ‘perfect speech’—and turns it into a wild, psycholo-delic apology rant. Moving with Porter’s peerless linguistic skill between a single speaker’s self-lacerating ‘apology’ to an excavation of family trauma, late-capitalist guilt and rage and the shame that attends—that must attend—modern masculinity. All this is, of course, handled with the usual slipperiness and smarts—where nothing is quite as it seems, pregnant with its opposite, a shape-shifting tour-de-force of voice and concept from our most exciting contemporary writer.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Contemporary

110 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2024

About the author

Max Porter’s first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers won the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers’ Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. It has been sold in twenty-nine territories. Complicité and Wayward’s production of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy opened in Dublin in March 2018. Max lives in Bath with his family.

Reviews

[Charles Edwards-Freshwater · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply fantastic. Max is my favourite contemporary writer and this is the perfect example of why.

Able to convey so much with so little, this book particularly resonated as I'm a man of a certain age where everything just felt so spot on

A gorgeous piece of writing - I'm now desperate to see the film

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and published

[Ellis (whatellisreadnext) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have much to say other than this was just lovely. Max Porter knows just how to say so much with so little. My heartttttt.

[Marek Torčík · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Forgive us our thoughts as we neglect the thoughts of others”

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een pareltje in mijn boekenkast, eentje die ik nu twee keer las en waar de poëtische zinnen bij het zomaar openslaan ook telkens wel iets losmaken.
Prachtig vormgegeven en zo benieuwd nu ook naar de kortfilm die de basis was van dit boekje.

Quote: “I was as jealous as the wintering side of the earth is, watching spring trot away at the pace of a romance.”

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t know how this did what it did to me. Suspicious of witchcraft

[wilma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"
Gather ye rosebuds
while you may,
for quickly time is flying.
"

[Hannah L]

The species-deep story that I didn’t dedicate myself, all of this unreal time, to you. You who grew beside me.

[Arun Seehra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introspective ass shit. One read isn’t enough

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel seen. Max is incredible at saying so much in so little words.

Gather ye rosebuds
while you may,
for quickly time is flying.

[Karl Baldacchino · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a dark place mentally, so having a short prose to match the emotions that I have was a comfort. I’d really like to see the short visual piece that this book is taken from.

[Katrina Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was unsure what I thought of Max Porter's writing having not really clicked with Grief is a Thing with Feathers. Maybe my defences were down as a result because this small book hit me in the emotional guts.

It's at times almost uncomfortably pitying, grovelling and shameful. In a way that feels hard to look at in the eye.

I loved the way Max addresses in particular those women in his life who have set an expectation for his character that he struggles to match. His response to these higher dreams are apologetic and messy.

It's so so good.

[Talla T · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I'm sorry
for forgetting how small I was,
in relation to




an inlet, to a cove,


to a nautical mile,


to the ripe gloaming
turning of an evening


as the sun
smiles over the lip
of a day.”

[connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how Max Porter touches on masculinity and violence in all of his work in such varying ways. Even when his style remains the same, every bit of work feels so distinct in its own right.

[Adam(ChaosOfCold) · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart. Fuck.

[Louis Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very pretty very nice bit heavy on the family trauma

[Susana Pomba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always feel I understand boys and men better after reading Max Porter. Another marvellous book.

[Jessie Pietens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of Porter’s masterpieces. His writing is a force of nature and entirely engulfs the reader in language magic. I cannot praise him highly enough. A literary hero of our time.

[Maru · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've watched the short film about six times already, and I have a feeling that I'll be rereading the book over and over again.

"I keep on picking
and picking
and unpeeling
and revealing
and undressing
myself,
unzipping
my sinful skin,
unlearning
myself
from the things
I've been living in"

"I'm sorry I was trapped
in hours
when there is no such thing"

[Jules Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is actually a hundred ⭐️ stars, that’s how good it is. Mac Porter, the writer you are. The things you do to my heart and soul. Phenomenal.

[Oliver Shrouder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous pocket of gold

[Dan Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Ellie

[thehalcyondaysofsummer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opening lines: ‘I came out here to apologise’

[Maurane Pieters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burst out crying on the train home. Strangely fitting.
Absolutely stunning.

Would recommend.
Like all of his work.

[Shawn Ng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hypnotic exhumation of one's past, present, and future as a series of soul awakening rants + self-deprecations + apologies. It recalls men who sail away from home, leaving forgotten grans and mams. It pinpoints men who stack bad decisions and actions atop one another and blame their dads and their dads and their dads; history is death masquerading as boys and men.It summons our weak resolve and faux liberalism and performative environmentalism in the face of capitalism, hiding behind blue screens of nothingness. It shouts for our laziness to love ourselves and the people who grew beside us. It yearns for absolution, to shed its sinful skin, but the crevasse too wide to cross, dream too big to realise. So let's take it one day at a time, because each day is more than enough (to handle).

[Raina S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I came out here to apologise."

I can't tell you why those few words carried so much weight. I can't tell you why I'm crying over experiences I should not relate to. I can't tell you why I'm a different person having read this. I can't tell you what changed me, but I know it did. There was too much contained in that little of a book. It broke me but opened me to examine my soul with honesty.

The anger, the regret, the despondency, the wrath, the shame, the guilt, the sadness. It's grief. It's the knowing what is known but too late. It's the clawing backward for a second chance only to be met with the cold conscience of time. The intensity of knowing this is final, this is done, this is it. Choices are stone whether I made them or they were made for me.

Poetry aims to capture the hidden intricacies of the human experience, and Max broke my soul with his. I did not anticipate the weight of these meager, spaced-out words to hurt this much. This poetry is pain, and it attaches to the reader with parasitic depth, forcing them to confront that which makes them human in a void of unreality. It was an experience, and those willing to take it will find there are two sides, and they are both chosen and constructed by the same hands.

It was beautiful. I was carried through a narrative buried in my soul. I was made vulnerable. I felt the tension as the words raged faster, and I felt the drop in my stomach when I was, all of a sudden, alone in shame and accompanied by regret. Cillian’s introduction, the structure, the prose, all of it - it gifts a perpetual rebirth every time any eyes glaze those lines. And what the words could not communicate, tears filled in the rest. ...it is more than enough.

[Nicolarowlands · Rating 5 out of 5]

“My wondering was so limited and free from wonderment, I gorged and littered, half-loved and discarded. I’m sorry for forgetting how small I was, in relation to an inlet, to a cove, to the ripe gloaming turning of an evening as the sun smiles over the lip of a day. I’m sorry I was trapped in hours when there is no such thing. I yearn to backwards flood my impatient self with a wordless sense of smallness and timelessness.”

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m bound heart and soul to anything Max Porter writes. The universal depth behind his words strike the mind in a powerful blast. Once again, I’m in awe!

[Ellie L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Next to me, out here, // calm in the light, // is the apology / I cradled closest, // the species-deep, Sorry // that I didn’t dedicate / myself, / all / of this / unreal / time, // to you.” Max Porter continues to out-Porter himself with his latest published work, the poem All Of This Unreal Time, which also doubles as a script for Porter’s film of the same name, starring Cillian Murphy, who writes a warm foreword for the book. Part outpouring, part apology, this is a text in which language makes and unmakes itself in the exploration of expression and exactness. “I think she was breathing deeply, // gazing at the grey slab of lazily / painted sea, // the badly remembered me. / She was enraptured, / decoding, inviting my self into / the scene. // And out to sea were little / human specks, / and it was apparent / that these little marks were me, // many terrible times over.” Porter is as ever a master at bending language into the most striking configurations: “the hard work of staying”, the “architecture of my personhood is shittiness”, and the breathless declaration that “this is what bombards me, / heavenly father, / in my guilt, // in my 21st century hiding, // bathed in the blue screen blinding light of your frightful nothingness.” The frantic speaker is at times unlikeable in his directness but remains engaging and loveable in his painful yet enduringly gentle candour: “So, listen, / my friend, / I’m not sorry that I was a body / at all times / failing, // but I wish I had been / less deluded / about the / strangeness / and / shortness of such a thing.” I’m so sad I can’t make the London premiere of the film this week, but very excited to hear Max and the legendary Anna B Savage performing from the poem later this month. As with all things Max Porter, and especially these live renditions of his work (like Lanny and Shy), it’ll be a treat.