Category: Authors

Still: ‘A Job Worth Doing’ by S.J. Butler

27th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: an old telephone, with its handset off the cradle, sitting on a large wooden meeting-room table.

The story: a cleaner goes to do one last shift at the defunct and empty town hall. This story recalls (coincidentally) the first entry in Still, ‘Midnight Hollow’, which takes a very similar premise. Butler’s story is as evocative as Piggott’s, but the tone is warmer, less melancholic. If ‘Midnight Hollow’ is a story of loss, ‘A Job Worth Doing’ is more a celebration of what has passed.

Links: S.J. Butler’s website / interview with Butler about her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Paul Rooney, Dust and Other Stories (2012)

26th October 2012 / / 2 Comments

Paul Rooney is an artist who often works with text-based materials. Looking at the publication credits, many of the pieces in Dust first appeared in other forms – as video or sound works, or different kinds of written text. Now they’ve been brought together in this collection, a joint publication by Akerman Daly and Aye-Aye Books.

Voice is a key concern in these stories, and perhaps especially the extent to which the ‘voice’ of a story can be trusted. In ‘Towards the Heavenly Void, a musician with a sideline in mediumship finds himself channelling the voice of Les Dawson – or at least of someone who claims that the comedian we know as Les Dawson was someone with whom he swapped lives, whilst the man who’s ‘talking’ went off to South America in search of Che Guevara. Rooney captures the tone and character of one of Dawson’s monologues, leaving us with layers of voice that – as the tale’s ending symbolises – evaporate when you try to unpick them.

Rooney also makes use of different textual forms in Dust. ‘Transcript’ (a collaboration with Will Rose) purports to document a Q&A session between Rooney, Rose, and a film-maker. The talk soon gets maddeningly and entertainingly out of hand with audience interruptions, which dissolve the text into a clamour of voices – all overlaid with the interventions of the anonymous transcriber. It’s typical of Rooney’s playful approach that, as a character, the author says nothing; though of course his words are all over this piece.

Other stories have more conventional structures but come at the author’s concerns in equally effective ways. ‘Words and Silence’ tells of a call centre worker who creates elaborate personas for herself when making calls; eventually her imaginings threaten to swamp her view of reality. ‘The Kendal Iconoclasm’ turns a spy thriller into a tale of existential horror: its characters know they’re in a story – they can see it being typed out in front of their eyes – but not who the writer (or writers) are. Rooney’s protagonist tries to exert some control as he heads up the motorway, but he seems not to realise just how deeply enmeshed he is in the story – there’s no escaping from this escapist fiction. It’s just one example of the treachery of stories and words, as seen in so many ways throughout this collection.

Any Cop? Yes – taken together, the stories of Dust are an interesting exploration of voice and text. And Rooney’s diverse approaches means that there’ll always be something different on the next page.

(This review also appears at Bookmunch.)

Still: ‘Noise’ by James Higgerson

25th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: an enclosed roof space, viewed through a series of triangular support frames, with lamps hanging above. You can almost hear the harsh echoes that would result from any loud noise here.

The story: Higgerson’s protagonist tries to explain to his counsellor/therapist how everything ‘got too loud’ for him. What follows is a snappy, rhythmic jaunt through the cacophony of modern life.

Links: James Higgerson’s website / interview with Higgerson on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Harry Karlinsky, The Evolution of Inanimate Objects (2012): Strange Horizons review

24th October 2012 / / 0 Comments

Strange Horizons have published my review of The Evolution of Inanimate Objects by Harry Karlinsky. I was talking yesterday about creative approaches to the material of sf, and here’s one — a pseudo-historical biography of Charles Darwin’s (fictional) son Thomas, who applies his father’s theories of evolution to the development and classification of everyday items.

This is a playful concept, but Karlinsky’s novel is more than a diversion: it’s also an effective character study, and a reflection on science and how it progresses (see Alan Bowden for more on that point).

Click here to read my review in full.

The Confidant blog tour: day 1

22nd October 2012 / / 6 Comments

Welcome to the first stop on a blog tour for The Confidant by Hélène Grémillon. Hélène will be taking part in different features on various blogs this week, starting right here. To get things going, I’ll repost my review of The Confidant from earlier in the month.

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Hélène Grémillon’s first novel begins in Paris of 1975, where Camille Werner is sorting through the letters of condolence she has received on the death of her mother. One of the letters stands out: an account from someone named Louis of his childhood attraction to Annie, a girl from his village. Not knowing anyone named Louis or Annie, Camille thinks no more of this – until she starts receiving regular letters from Louis, telling more of his story.

Camille learns that Annie became friends with one Madame M., a rich young woman who came to the village with her husband, eventually (as Annie told Louis when they met again a few years later, during the war) agreeing to act as a surrogate mother for the infertile Madame M.  Events would subsequently take a tragic turn, and prove to be far more relevant to Camille than she had thought.

The full story of The Confidant takes shape only gradually, as we view the past from the perspectives of different characters. Madame M. kept Alice indoors during her pregnancy, and didn’t tell her about the Nazi invasion of France – but we’re forced to re-evaluate what we think of these individuals when we read Madame M.’s testimony. The final revelations come as Grémillon’s novel turns to poetry, as though prose is no longer sufficient (or can no longer be trusted) to tell this story. All in all, The Confidant is an intriguing piece of work.

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Hélène has kindly answered a few questions about her novel:

Can you tell me about some of the non-literary influences on The Confidant?

I love the theatre. Living in Paris, I’m lucky enough to be able to take advantage of a huge and beautiful range of shows, there’s always something to see. I often go to concerts as well, classical or otherwise. I love musical theatre, in London or Broadway, as sadly, it’s not a very “French” genre. I never say no to an exhibition, but I’m very careful about when I visit them, as I don’t like it when the rooms are too busy, and even less the queues. Finally, I watch a lot of films on DVD!

 What was the seed of the novel? Which came first, the decision to set The Confidant in its particular time periods, the idea of someone receiving letters about the past – or something else entirely?

The first thing I wanted to write about was a conflict between two women. That was really the starting point for The Confidant. Afterwards came the idea of a family secret, and from there came the letters and at last, the historical context. It all had to work well with my plot.

You use a number of different formats in the book – the short alternating chapters when Camille is reading Louis’s letters about Annie; the long monologue of Madame M.’s testimony; poetry at the end. How did you arrive at this technique?

I wanted the story to show different points of view. I therefore started by distributing the body of the story amongst the letters, and then I wrote the long monologue which sheds a new light on things. As for the end, the format imposed itself as I was writing the passage, and I kept it!

Who are some of your favourite writers?

There are many of them, and they depend on the time period. Shakespeare, Proust, Victor Hugo, Jean Anouilh, Stefan Sweig, Maupassant, Fred Vargas, John Irving, and I’ve recently discovered Jonathan Safran Foer, whose writing style I admire.

***

Thanks to Hélène for taking the time to respond. The Confidant blog tour continues tomorrow at Novelicious, which will feature Hélène’s writing room. Then, on Wednesday, Stu at Winston’s Dad will be reviewing The Confidant and asking Hélène about her favourite books.

Still: ‘Odd Job’ by Preeta Samarasan

22nd October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a close-up of a metal stag.

The story: while waiting for their exam results, two girls volunteer to do odd jobs at some of the local posh houses – and uncover a dark secret in one of them. This is a nicely paced story, with an effective sting in its ending.

Link: Preeta Samarasan’s website

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Book notes: Richard Weihe and Robert Jackson Bennett

20th October 2012 / / 3 Comments

Richard Weihe, Sea of Ink (2003/12)
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Peirene Press’s Year of the Small Epic has so far brought us a grand domestic drama and a study of bereavement. The series takes a lighter turn in its final instalment, with Swiss writer Richard Weihe’s fictionalised biography of the Chinese painter Bada Shanren. He is born Zhu Da, a scion of the Ming dynasty; but political change and his father’s death lead him to join a monastery and devote his life to art, going through many names before settling on Bada Shanren, ‘man on the mountain of the eight compass points’.

Sea of Ink has eleven illustrations of Bada’s beautiful paintings, and Weihe includes descriptions of how the artist worked, his brush strokes and hand movements. This has the striking effect of creating a detailed impression which remains just that – an impression. Even though we can see the final paintings, there’s room for our subjective interpretation of Weihe’s words. The novella itself works in a similar way, its short chapters acting like brush strokes to create a portrait of Bada’s life which is necessarily a fiction, a construct.

The ultimate story told in Sea of Ink seems to me one of a man finding peace in life through finding (or accepting) his place – finding the world in the marks of ink and brush. The tone of the writing is quiet and reflective; I’d say this is ideal reading for an autumn night.

Robert Jackson Bennett, The Troupe (2012)

Over the last few years, Robert Jackson Bennett has been crafting his own distinctive visions of the American fantastic’s iconic tropes. For his third novel, he turns his attention to the magical travelling show. We meet George Carole, a sixteen-year-old vaudeville pianist as he leaves his current job to visit the troupe of Hieronomo Silenius, whom George believes to be his father. Silenius’s reputation precedes him, but no one ever remembers the details of his show. When George watches a performance, he finds out why: the Silenius troupe plays an extraordinary song that make those who hear it forget what they’ve seen – but it doesn’t work on George.

Falling in with the troupe, George discovers that this music is pat of the ‘First Song’, the one that brought Creation into being; peforming it is the only thing that holds back the ‘wolves’ who would seek to devour reality. Silenius’s band go from place to place in search of fragments of the First Song, which only those of the Silenius blood-line can carry (the song didn’t work on George because he is of that line). So begins a journey into the world’s mythic spaces, with reality itself at stake.

Bennett achieves a nice balance between the personal and cosmic focus. All the members of Silenius’s troupe are pretending to be something they’re not, and the theme of escape runs through the novel – escaping the past, and escaping the inevitable. The ending makes use of a risky technique (I appreciate this is vague, but want to avoid a spoiler), but Bennett pulls it off. His body of work continues to intrigue, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

Still: ‘Lift Under Inspection Do Not Touch’ by Richard Beard

19th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a closed door with a ‘Lift Under Inspection’ sign hanging from the handle.

The story: a series of anecdotes about lifts – possibly true, possibly not. Just as Beard’s piece blurs the line between fact and fiction, so it effectively portrays lifts as simultaneously useful and threatening spaces.

Link: Richard Beard’s website

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘The Tree at the Limit’ by Aamer Hussein

16th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a view of bare trees against an overcast sky, seen through a barred window (possibly the same window as in the ‘Corridor’ photograph.

The story: a tour of an art exhibition, interleaved with extracts from the exhibition catalogue and other relevant texts. This is a deftly constructed story, hinting that more may be going on than meets the eye. Hussein reveals the full possibilities only gradually, and even then keeps the truth ambiguous.

Link: Aamer Hussein’s website / interview with Hussein on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘The Playwright Sits Next to Her Sister’ by Mary Rechner

15th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the top and centre of a set of stage curtains.

The story: Mousy playwright Lisa joins her glamorous sister Therese at the theatre, to see the former’s new play. This is a very short piece, but it vividly lays bare the tensions between the two sisters; and Rechner makes good use of sensory detail to convey the stuffy and intense atmosphere of the theatre.

Links: Mary Rechner’s website / interview with Rechner on her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

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