Category: Authors

Sunday Story Society: “Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring”

14th October 2012 / / 5 Comments

To keep up to date with the Sunday Story Society: view our schedule; follow @SundayStorySoc on Twitter; or visit us on Facebook.

Today we’re talking about “Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring” by M. John Harrison, a story which became the foundation of its author’s 1996 novel Signs of Life. To kick off, we have an extensive response from Nina Allan, which I’ll quote only in part here:

You could almost say that ‘Isobel’ is MJH in microcosm […] It bears many ur-Harrison trademarks: gaunt cityscapes in decline, disenchanted individualists in terminal disconnect mode, intimations of the marvellous. The language of the story manages somehow to be both resolute and dissolute, a gradual persuasion of the drab towards incandescence.

And here are some initial thoughts from me:

When I read this story, I still had the experience of Viriconium very much in mind; if that series moves towards the destruction of fantasy-as-escape, I see “Isobel Avens” as doing something similar. Of course, there’s Isobel’s dream of flying, which cannot be realised; and the fantastical surgery, which is no magic solution. But I also think this is a great portrait of an exhausted relationship: empty conversations; Mick Rose’s constant calls for the reader to “imagine this”, as though his relationship with Isobel happened to someone else. And there are some superb lines: “The years I lived with her I slept so soundly” – I love how equivocal that sentiment is.

So, what did you think?

Three tales

12th October 2012 / / 2 Comments

Mike O’Driscoll, Eyepennies (2012)

This is the first in a new series of novellas from TTA Press, the publishers of Interzone and Black Static magazines. Eyepennies is named after a song by Sparklehorse, the musical project of the late Mark Linkous, who took his own life in 2010 (and to whom Mike O’Driscoll dedicates the piece). O’Driscoll’s protagonist is not strictly a fictionalised version of Linkous, but he is a musician named Mark who’s had a near-death experience.

Mark has been beset by bad dreams and waking visions, and this has taken its toll on his life and relationships. He withdraws into his music, feeling that a new album will provide the breakthrough that can lead to stability. But, listening to his previous albums for inspiration, he can hear sounds and voices in them that shouldn’t be there.

Eyepennies is a fine portrait of a person under psychological strain. O’Driscoll maintains the ambiguity over whether Mark’s experiences are supernatural or delusional in origin (and, indeed, over whether that makes any practical difference). The novella’s fragmented structure (reaching back into different periods of the protagonist’s life) further underlines the diffuse state of Mark’s mind. This is a good start for the novella series, and I look forward to future instalments.

André Maurois, A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles (1928)
Translated from the French by Charlotte de Koch

First published in 1928 (and now given a new edition by Turtle Point Press), A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles is a novella chronicling the adventure at sea of one Pierre Chambrelan and his companion Anne de Sauves.

Though they intend to cross the Pacific, a storm causes the pair to land on the privately owned island of Maïana, where life is devoted to the arts. The island has two castes of inhabitants: the Articoles, who spend all their time creating artworks; and the Béos, who use wealth from the island’s copious natural resources to support the Articoles. Pierre and Anne are kept on Maïana for several weeks, to see if the Articoles can draw on the pair’s experiences and personalities for material.

As well as a tale of seafaring, Maurois’s novella is a study of the dangers of insularity. The Articoles have become drawn into art so much that they have disengaged with the world and lost their empathy – their idea of madness is to think about life rather than art. Pierre starts off in his own (less extreme) state of disengagement: metaphorically adrift in life, living only for the romance of the voyage (Anne wanted to accompany him for similar reasons). His experiences on Maïana lead him to take stock, and find new connections with the world and other people. Yet here Pierre is, writing a journal of his voyage, just as the Articoles would – so perhaps he hasn’t left the past behind entirely after all. A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles is entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure.

(This review also appears on We Love This Book.)

Alison Littlewood, The Eyes of Water (2012)

This Spectral Press chapbook takes us to Mexico, where Alison Littlewood’s diver-protagonist Alex contemplates the gruesome death of his friend Rick. Far more skilled than Alex, Rick had been exploring one of the water-filled caves known as cenotés when something tore off his face. Alex learns that the Maya used the cenotés as places of sacrifice – and a vision of Rick encourages him to go exploring himself. There’s a nice sense of place about this story, particularly where the cenotés are concerned. Littlewood also constructs her plot skilfully, managing to tick all the event-boxes one expects to be ticked, whilst still leaving space for the denouement to head somewhere else.

Still: ‘From the Archive’ by James Miller

11th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the main seat in Hornsey Town Hall’s council chamber, with three globe-shaped lights hanging above, and a clock behind. The edges of the photographic slide are visible in the image.

The story: This piece treats Bakker’s photograph as an archive document from the distant past. Much of its effect comes from seeing how Miller’s unidentified future writer has misinterpreted the image, and how knowledge of history and culture have become mangled over time. It’s amusing to read, but also leaves one with the nagging thought of just how easily that sort of thing could happen…

Link: James Miller’s website / interview with Miller on his story

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

Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods (2011)

9th October 2012 / / 8 Comments

Lightning Rods is a satire on American corporate culture and social mores, which traps its readers and characters alike in mazes of rhetoric. Helen DeWitt’s protagonist is Joe, a salesman who failed at selling encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners, but has his brightest idea when hope seems dim. Retreating into his private fantasies, Joe theorises that sexual harassment in the workplace could be dealt with if men had a legitimate outlet for their desires. He devises a system whereby a select group of male employees (the ones a company wouldn’t want to lose if they were accused of harassment) can, discreetly and anonymously, satisfy their urges through a hole in the wall of the disabled toilet. The women on the other side of that hole are the ‘lightning rods’ – staff supplied by Joe to perform normal office functions most of the time, and additional duties as required. Complete secrecy is assured: what could go wrong?

This is hardly the most appealing premise for a novel, granted; but the way DeWitt uses it is not tawdry, and she has serious points to make. Perhaps one of the key points is how easily we can delude ourselves and others with words. For example, in his first successful sale, Joe is quick to pounce on the company boss’s comment that they provide a disabled toilet, though they have no disabled employees:

There’s absolutely no reason why this space should not be put to use to promote the well-being of employees actually on the staff [says Joe]…I think it’s up to those of us who are more fortunate not to put any unnecessary obstacles in [disabled people’s] way. At the same time, when all’s said and done, I think it’s possible to go too far the other way (p. 65).

The boss, Steve, promptly agrees (‘It’s not that I’m unsympathetic, but this kind of PC crap really gets my goat’), and allows Joe to outline his plans for the space – at which point, the salesman changes his tune:

‘You know, I really gotta hand it to you,’ he said, surveying the cubicle. ‘You really provide a first-class facility. You may not know this, but not all disabled toilets provide a sink at the right level’ (pp. 65-6)

The disabled stalls are a waste of space, until Joe opens up a new possibility for their use; at which point they become something of which Steve should be proud. So Joe creates and manipulates ideas to make his sales – and he does it throughout the novel, modifying not so much his product as the rhetoric around his product.

But this is more than sales patter: the whole of Lightning Rods is peppered with Joe’s cliché-ridden business-speak – this is how he thinks. And it’s not empty: this rhetoric has power, creates different and damaging ways of thinking. For instance, it takes some mental contortions for one to start considering high-flying executives to be ‘socially deprived’, but Joe manages it, and convinces his customers – and the needs and feelings of people outside that ‘deprived’ group are soon forgotten. In sales, ‘you’ve got to deal with people the way they are. Not how you’d like them to be’ is a common refrain of DeWitt’s novel – but Joe discovers how easily he can make people be as he would like them to be.

In his review, John Self identifies language as the main subject of Lightning Rods; as you’ll surmise from this post, I would agree that it’s important. But I wouldn’t go quite so far as to relegate the satire to second place; I think the social commentary and language of DeWitt’s novel are too intertwined for that. The characters who get ahead the most in Joe’s world are marked out by their own command of rhetoric; but they’re also ambitious and see ways to profit from circumstance. The deadening tone of DeWitt’s prose/Joe’s thinking turns an intimate act between two people into something cold and clinical; but other factors feed into that, and there are social phenomena to consider even if you disregard Joe’s words. The language and satire of Lightning Rods are aspects of the same thing.

The whole edifice of Joe’s success in Lightning Rods is fragile; all that it would take to destroy it is for people to stop and think, and they’d see how absurd the idea was. But Joe’s trick is never to give people the time to do that. It’s not until the last chapter that DeWitt lets the narrative tone lapse, which allows us to ask, ‘But what about..?’ without receiving a pat answer. It’s jarring when this happens, and it shows what complete mastery of tone the author has in this novel. You will look at the world differently after reading Lightning Rods – and you can’t really ask for more from a novel than that.

Elsewhere
Helen DeWitt’s website
Interview with DeWitt at Boing Boing
The publishers: And Other Stories / New Directions
Some other reviews of Lightning Rods: Words of Mercury; Alex in Leeds; Jenny Turner for the Guardian.

Still: ‘The Blind Man’ by Nicholas Royle

8th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a box of crumpled strong-room bags, with numbered labels attached.

The story: Royle’s narrator tells how he became interested in buses as a boy, and stole some destination blinds and bus Fleetbooks. There’s a great rhythm to this piece, helped along by the short lists of bus destinations that punctuate it. And Royle tops it off with a dark twist at the end.

Link: Nicholas Royle’s website / interview with Royle on his story

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

Still: ‘Switchgirls’ by Tania Hershman

7th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: four old-fashioned light switches arranged in a square, each with a label bearing a woman’s name.

The story: a monologue by a narrator whose identity is ambiguous, perhaps a female robot lamenting the loss of her sisters. Details of ‘real’ life are heightened through their transformation into Hershman’s science-fiction idiom, and the ending is especially poignant.

Link: Tania Hershman’s website / interview with Hershman on her story

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

Still: ‘A Rose for Raha’ by Ava Homa

7th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a dried yellow rose lying on top of what looks like a document folder of some sort. A sticker with someone’s name can be seen next to the rose.

The story: Raha and Farzad are young sisters; their father, a refugee, is unable to find work, and faces jail if he can’t pay the rent. The two girls play as their parents argue; Homa portrays this effectively, underscoring the family’s difficulties whilst maintaining the distance that comes with writing from Raha’s viewpoint. The titular rose acts a symbol of the family’s hope – something to keep growing in the garden, and not to remove, for fear of angering the landlord.

Link: Ava Homa’s website

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

Book notes: Hélène Grémillon and Gavin Weston

6th October 2012 / / 6 Comments

Hélène Grémillon, The Confidant (2010/2)
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson

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.

Gavin Weston, Harmattan (2012)

The Harmattan is a trade wind that carries dust from the Sahara across West Africa; an analogous harshness and suffocation blows into the life of Gavin Weston’s protagonist, Haoua Boureima. Young Haoua lives in Watada, a village in the Republic of Niger, and dreams of becoming a teacher. But her family life is disrupted when her beloved soldier brother Abdelkrim visits and argues with their father over the latter’s gambling habit. Then Haoua’s mother is taken to hospital in the capital, and diagnosed with AIDS – and the girl’s world begins to fall apart, culminating in the marriage in which we see her (aged twelve) in the prologue.

Haoua’s tale is interspersed with the correspondence between her and the Boyds, the Irish family who sponsor her. Weston uses this device effectively: the naïve, childlike tone of the letters masks the difficulties of Haoua’s life; and the tribulations faced by the Boyd family are shown to be, not insignificant, but remote from Haoua’s concerns. A variation on the same technique works superbly towards novel’s end, as the Boyds’ father is thwarted in his search for news on Haoua.

Harmattan is a bleak book, there’s no denying that – it’s structured as a narrative of loss and possibilities closing off, rather than of escape and flourishing. But it also has a strong sense of forward motion that drives the narrative inexorably on towards its sombre conclusion.

Still: ‘Pa-dang’ by Jan van Mersbergen

5th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the handle of a door that’s been left ajar. A patch of the door’s green paint, next to the handle, has worn or been scratched away to reveal white underneath.

The story: this is the first English-language story by Jan van Mersbergen, the author of Tomorrow Pamplona. Told mainly in dialogue, it concerns a young man named Anton being taken home to see his family for his twenty-third birthday. It’s clear from the start that all is not well with Anton, and the choppy rhythms of van Mersbergen’s prose underline the sense of unease, up to a rather chilling end.

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

Still: ‘The Staircase Treatment’ by Myriam Frey

3rd October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a staircase viewed as it curves around into a new flight. We can’t see where the stairs lead, only that they are shabby and dusty.

The story: after our narrator gave birth, she developed memory problems. Thinking of different words as she climbed stairs helped her recover – but she lost touch with her son as an adult. Now she goes to visit him for the first time in years. There’s a neat reversal in this story, and I like Frey’s use of the staircase as an image and venue.

Link: Myriam Frey’s website / interview with Frey 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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