Latchkey: A Drift Through Jeff Young’s Memory-Scapes

In his latest missive from the demimonde, Latchkey, the TLS Ackerley Prize-winning author Jeff Young invites us once again to drift through the city- and memory-scapes of his life. Mike Pinnington enthusiastically accepts the return ticket…

With Ghost Town, Delíria and Wild Twin, author Jeff Young has invited us on repeat drifts through the city- and memory-scapes of his life. Whether in the form of memoir or so-called ‘beat fable’, with him as guide, we have trod – sometimes shambolically, occasionally anxiously, always enthusiastically – the streets of Liverpool, Paris, and Amsterdam, his words weaving through and indelibly into the fabric of these places. Sitting somewhere between a debauched version of Orwell’s experiences in Down and Out in Paris and London, and those of a latter day (by way of of the River Mersey) Situationist, Young enlivens and revivifies the urban, cutting through the spectacle to paint vivid pictures of time, people and place, often blurring reality with the fantasmagoric. Ghosts, architectural and ancestral, frequently haunt both pages and pavement.

All of which brings us to his latest missive from the demimonde, Latchkey, published by Berlin-based Sacred Parasite books. While framed as a novella rather than memoir, it nevertheless sits snugly in the continuum of his recent works. It is, though, more ‘locally’ situated than either Ghost Town or Wild Twin, setting us down firmly in the streets of Toxteth at the back end of the 80s. A trying time for many, but perhaps nowhere more so than there, it is a melange of those just getting by: ketamine fiends, squatters, victims of break-ins and loneliness. Even so, across this slim book, Young endeavours to find – and is keen to show us – the places where the light gets in. There is solace in poetry and the blues, the unlikely appearance of Pete, the three-legged mouse, and unexpected friendship in the aftermath of another break-in. This is a portrait of the art life when lived for real.

In a decrepit post-industrial Liverpool (once populated by the wealthy – ship builders, slavers, industrialists) eccentric, sometimes dangerous ‘characters’ lurk around every corner and darken (or kick in) every doorway. In the hands of others, these might be flimsy suggestions of the imagination, but here they are rendered with dramatic three dimensional authenticity, fully inhabiting Toxteth and the streets of your mind’s eye as you read them into existence.

There are some fabulous vignettes. From the reprobates ‘altering their universe’ with those aforementioned horse-tranquilizers, to the always naked Rampling (‘Apart from wooden shoes’), and the ‘dark philosophers and insomniacs’ found after hours in the local. You have no problem believing you’ve likely encountered these men yourself – or at least men like them. That they all make their entrance in the opening ten or so pages of Latchkey speaks to the power and multiplicity of Young’s conjuring to life of words, to his making of these simple rectangles of black and white at times lurid, shakily-choreographed numbers in full Technicolor.

As mentioned, loss and loneliness stalk Latchkey. We variously find our narrator mourning his abandonment at the hands of his ex – who has escaped this Scouse stab at Bohemia for Venezuela – sobbing to records, while ruminating on what becomes of ‘lonely souls in darkened rooms at midnight’, and, in the final pages of the book, another leaving of sorts. Even if this time it’s the loss of little more than an acquaintance to Runcorn, it is a keenly felt blow: ‘what the fuck do you do with that missile of terrible information? What do you do with your lonely aching heart?’ The vulnerability and urgency of these questions is such that it is as if we, the reader, were being asked. Of course, there is no easy answer nor glib retort, other than to say we’ve all been there.

While certainly bittersweet, there are the still-glowing embers of warmth and even hope to be found here; indeed, both of these qualities are nurtured and figure, sometimes just out of sight, in much of Young’s writing. Just prior to his receiving the devastating news of this latest departure from his life, we join the narrator walking through the park; there is an encounter with Amethyst Deceiver, a mushroom described as a ‘purple and white and pale lilac mystery.’ It brings with it the following assurance from his soon to be Runcorn-bound companion: ‘It’s telling you to trust. To trust the mystery of your longing…’

The book, though it doesn’t end there, could easily have done so. With that bit of surprising, tender wisdom, hairs stand on end and eyes are pricked, for this can be read as a reassurance not only to Young’s protagonist, but to all those who accept the invitation to dizzily waltz through the pages of this magical if dishevilled little tale.

Mike Pinnington  

Jeff Young’s Latchkey is published by Sacred Parasite books, out now

Ghost Town and Wild Twin can be found at Little Toller books

Image credit: Latchkey by Jeff Young, Sacred Parasite Books, 2026. Images courtesy the author