Is the narrator imprisoned? Infirm or otherwise incapacitated? Is he mentally compromised? Is he a detained dissident, a barefooted tramp, or has he been imprisoned for fratricide? He seems aged and frail, we know he absconds at one point, towards the coast: “Any road’s a way out with a bit of persistence.” Or maybe we are reading his imaginings as he lies dying, or recently dead?

Maybe the main narrator in Some Things Wrong stands in for any one of us, stumbling through life without the confidence of commitment: “Shambling on out of little more than habit. Or lack of imagination”? The character is a figment of the author’s imagination, but maybe too of the reader’s – whose instinct is to reach out for a protagonist with a story to tell.

Beckett shines through the prose: “A road, a tree, a country road.” And Some Things Wrong reminded me of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, a flow of events that the reader makes fleeting sense of to form a story – probably a different story for each reader. In Some Things Wrong, I read of helpers, maybe carers, possibly warders. The helpers are distant, for we fear becoming the people we help. I read of a woman, also a helper – but is she of the same ones, or is she different? She has required medical care, and maybe she hasn’t made it.

While she is taking our man for a walk they meet another man – it is awkward. “The possibility of there not being a door is infinitely smaller than the possibility of there being a door” – did our man expect her to always be there to look after him, is he grieving? There is a dog, there has been a dog. Throughout the book there is reference to the fine line between what might have been and what is.

“There can be neither release nor escape”, our man seems tired of life and its business, or maybe resentful of them, but feels powerless to change his circumstances and lays a “curse on their prolongments”. However, I found moments of humour while reading – especially from the two people spying on the man and woman – are they the author? The humour not being in what they (he) observe, but in their pragmatism of describing it: “Some kind of hat” “With a brim?’’ “No. Not this one.” “Like a fez?” “Unlike a fez.” “A night-cap?” “No. Not a cap” “Then?” “He’s bare-headed. Stretched out on the cot ….”

“But nothing is more ludicrous than these attempts to take it all seriously.” The book has a narrative arc and leads to a denouement – whether that takes place on a beach, in the mind, or in Hades, I think is up to the reader. As is whether we exist in the same way characters in a book do: “There is no way that I am. There are only the ways that I am seen.”

I found a lot of Koed’s prose captivating: “The absence of a dog beneath the tree. A collarless dog. Unless absence can have a collar.” I enjoyed reading Some Things Wrong, and I encourage you to read it too … and see what stories you make up as you read.