Michael Loveday
Saboteur Awards Logo

Shortlisted for Best Novella,
2019 Saboteur Awards

Three Men on the Edge

Three Men on the Edge is a hybrid novella-in-flash sequence presenting three related story situations. My first full book, it was published by V. Press in 2018 and in 2019 was shortlisted for the Saboteur Best Novella Award.

Set in London’s ‘edgelands’, a suburban wilderness neither urban nor rural, Three Men on the Edge unfolds through a series of loosely linked short chapters. Three distinct sequences explore the meaning and value of different forms of relationship, through the daily lives, self-doubts, fantasies, obsessions and disappointments of three troubled men who slip into crisis when they lose connection with the women in their lives. (Denholm – ‘Cause for Alarm’, Gus – ‘The Invisible World’, and Martyn – ‘Chewing Glass’.)

Three Men on the Edge is three short novellas-in-flash in one book (NB more about the novella-in-flash form here), and it blurs the boundaries between fiction and poetry even more so than a typical novella-in-flash, as it moves between short-short stories and prose poems, and the reader conjures the story situation from the gaps in-between each chapter.

An example chapter from the book:

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Praise for Three Men on the Edge

“Three Men on the Edge took me unawares and made a huge impression. To me it represents what the Republic of Consciousness Prize is all about - hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose from a tiny independent press that's willing to take risks.”

—David Collard, chair of the judging panel, Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019

“A beautifully crafted novella-in-flash, small and perfect slices of life written with skill and heart.”

—Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon

“This is a heart-felt book, but its prose is controlled by a steely intelligence. It’s funny, too – and moving and scary. Michael Loveday is a name to watch. He’s writing a new kind of fiction.”

—David Swann, author of The Privilege of Rain

“With poetic language and emotional precision, Loveday writes like a cartographer about the wilderness we call ‘the human heart’.”

—Meg Pokrass, author of The Dog Looks Happy Upside Down

“Michael Loveday’s “Three Men on the Edge” (V. Press, 2018) reminds me of why I love the novella-in-flash form.”

—Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake.

“Exciting, compelling and very readable… it deserves to reach a wide audience’”

—Sarah Westcott, author of Slant Light

“…This book is a rummage through the storerooms of the human heart with all its fears, its passions, its yearnings, its failures, its betrayals.”

—Frances Spurrier, author of The Pilgrim Trail. Read the rest of the review at Volatile Rune

“Clever, clean and economically written… Three Men on the Edge is a triumph.”

—Joel Hames-Clarke, author of the Sam Williams trilogy

“The beauty of this book, overall, is its not-neatness, its focus on the out-of-focus, its one minute a story, its next minute a footnote, its edginess, its familiarity, its murkiness, it’s really good.”

—Jonathan Cardew at Bending Genres

“Brilliantly original and odd flash fiction from a very good publisher.”

—IndieRecs

“This is an original, well-crafted and enjoyable book.”

—London Grip magazine

“[T]hese are heart-rending stories of remoteness […] Loveday’s languid and dexterous language floats from the page […] Three Men on the Edge is an extremely moving novella.”

—TSS Publishing

“So, emptiness, sadness, meaninglessness, madness, an outer suburbia where it seems always to be drizzling. But in that mysterious transformation that only art can achieve – a pleasure to read.”

—Envoi magazine, issue 183

“An outstanding work of fiction. Three Men on the Edge is a remarkable first book.”

—Myra Schneider, poet and fiction writer, author of The Door to Colour

“a compelling mix [...] a moving and thought-provoking exploration of landscape both interior and exterior."

—Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 1, April 2024

“This is an enigmatic and intriguing work. [...] Sharply and poetically-written, Three Men on the Edge is as engaging as it is elusive.""

—The Frogmore Papers, Number 95