A Visit to Hell

Mr O'Loughlin’s first real or substantial collection of short prose, mostly written during the autumn of 1979, combines literary with philosophical themes in what is or became his characteristic approach to fiction. Surprisingly the overall result is not displeasing and, although the subject-matter and settings of one or two of the pieces are now slightly dated, the best of them retain a freshness and relevance to the contemporary and, we would guess, future world which should stand them in good stead for several years to-come. Of the eight examples included, we especially recommend the title piece, 'A Visit to Hell', as a reflection, albeit slightly distorted by literary licence, of contemporary life in all its diabolic frenzy and hellish cacophony! - A Centretruths editorial.

About the Author

John James O'Loughlin, to give him his full name, was born in Salthill, Galway City, the Republic of Ireland in 1952 of mixed Irish- and British-born parents of Irish descent. Following a parental split he was eventually taken back to England by his mother and maternal grandmother in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot (Hants), Oakham (Rutland), Aldershot (again) and, following the death and repatriation of his Athenry-born grandmother, Carshalton (Surrey), where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended first Barrow Hedges Primary School (at Junior level) and then Carshalton High School for Boys, where he developed a taste for cricket and football. Upon graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he was removed from the children's home by its authorities and placed with a hostel in Clapham, south London, which he endured for a week before getting his mother and stepfather to give him lodgings at their flat in Finsbury Park, north London, from where he went on, via two short-lived jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, where, after a period as a general clerk, he eventually became responsible, following promotion to clerical officer, for booking examination venues. After a brief flirtation with the study of history at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he was now living after moving out of his mother's flat early in the New Year (1971) first to a bedsitter in Sutton and then to a partitioned attic room in the house of an old school-friend's parents in Wallington and, subsequently, to a shared room in Merstham, he returned to his former clerical job in the West End but, following an enforced move back to north London via his mother's flat in January 1974 and two years of mental torment in successive bedsits in Crouch End, retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, including ill-health, and proceeded to dedicate himself to a literary vocation which, despite a brief return to the ABRSM in 1977 and a fairly lengthy spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey YMCA in the late 1980s and early '90s, he has effectively continued with ever since.

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