Category: Short Fiction

“The more you saw of a person the less you knew them”

21st June 2013 / / 2 Comments

Jane Rogers, Hitting Trees with Sticks (2012)

It’s no surprise to see “Winner of the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award” on the front cover of Jane Rogers’ first story collection – The Testament of Jessie Lamb is probably her best-known novel right now, and no doubt for many (including myself) it was an introduction to her work. So it seems worth asking as a way in, where do the stories of Hitting Trees with Sticks stand in relation to Jessie Lamb? Well, think of that novel as a tale about understanding – about a girl trying to explain herself to the parents who can’t understand the choice she wants to make. Understanding (or failure to understand) is a theme that also runs through this collection, and Rogers approaches it from many angles.

There are some adolescent protagonists in Hitting Trees with Sticks, but they don’t necessarily get Jessie Lamb’s chance to set their thoughts out. In ‘Sports Leader’, a boy who’s missed out on a place at college takes a job as a window cleaner – partly because it lets him nosy into other people’s houses. One senses that he means well at heart, but isn’t too worldly-wise; as a result, others may take advantage of him. The Sports Leadership course for which he still holds out becomes a symbol of the boy’s thwarted hopes and potential.

At least he still has a life ahead of him, though, unlike the title character of ‘Where Are You, Stevie?’ The story begins with a narrator, Amanda, expressing her current frustrations: Christmas is getting earlier, and why have they sent that young lout to work at the theatre, it’s not as if he’ll do anything… But she is brought up short when she learns that Stevie is dead. We then hear from Stevie’s grandmother, his girlfriend, and his neighbour, who each reveal more about him; we come to see how Stevie got into the situation he did, and that there was more to him than Amanda supposed. The presence of Stevie looms large even though he is fundamentally absent; he is understood by the reader as he could not have been by those in his life.

Elsewhere in the collection, Rogers’ characters are finding that they didn’t know as much as they thought, or try to hide knowledge from others. The narrator of ‘Kiss and Tell’ was on a writing retreat with a famous politician whom she at first thought obnoxious, though she eventually had cause to change her mind. ‘The Tale of a Naked Man’ sees a Ugandan man arrive home nude at 4am in a bush taxi and attempt to convince his wife that his story of being waylaid by bandits is true – but there’s no real way of knowing, as story piles upon story. In ‘Conception’, a mother is reluctant to tell her daughter what she and her partner were thinking when the girl was conception. ‘Morphogenesis’ presents Alan Turing as a man who apprehended the workings of the universe as had none before him, but was ultimately destroyed by a human world that refused to understand him.

The title story of Hitting Trees with Sticks is also its closing piece, and for me its most powerful. It is a first-person portrait of Celia Benson, an old woman with dementia. Rogers takes us inside a psyche which continually makes and remakes the world. Celia’s viewpoint makes sense to her, and the details that don’t fit are mistakes or absent-mindedness – the Meals on Wheels must be for some poor old dear, not her; and Celia has obviously just mislaid the shopping. But then the moment passes, and a new present is formed: Celia has lost the sense of continuity that would enable her to engage with the world – though of course, as far as she’s concerned, nothing is wrong. ‘Hitting Trees with Sticks’ is a harrowing piece of fiction, made all the more so by our knowledge that its protagonist cannot step out of the perspective we experience through her narration. As readers, we understand Celia all too well.

This book has been shortlisted for the 2013 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Click here to read my other posts on the shortlist.

(Read some other reviews of Hitting Trees with Sticks: Shortly Speaking; Carys Bray for The Short Review; Carlotta Eden for Thresholds; Elizabeth Simner for For Books’ Sake.)

“This is how hard you should have fought for my son when you brought him into the world”

12th June 2013 / / 4 Comments

Adam Marek, The Stone Thrower (2012)

Who is the Stone Thrower? In the title story of this, Adam Marek’s second collection, he is a boy killing the chickens  of the lakeside house that Hal’s family is renting. Hal pulls out all the stops to save his birds, demonstrating an action hero’s dexterity – but he is unprepared for just how determined the boy is to achieve his goal. In the collection as a whole, the figure of the Stone Thrower may the extraordinary forces at work in Marek’s stories, forces that may inspire extraordinary (to us, at least) responses in the adult characters seeking to protect their charges (chickens in Hal’s case, but more often children).

Marek’s tales typically begin with what appears to be a fairly unremarkable situation, but as they develop we may discover that not all is as it seems. In ‘The Stormchasers’, a father heads out with his son Jakey to go looking for a tornado. At story’s end, however, we find that the true purpose of that journey was to protect Jakey from a different kind of storm which has been going on at home. ‘Remember the Bride Who Got Stung?’ sees Victor out on a picnic with his family, when his allergic son Nate is stung by a bee; having left behind Nate’s shots , Victor determines to get the child’s adrenaline flowing – by any means necessary.

That latter story in particular illustrates one of Marek’s common techniques: to show how particular circumstances have shaped a character’s psychology in ways that appear reasonable to them, but may not to an outside observer like the reader. But – like many of The Stone Thrower’s tale’s – ‘Remember the Bride’ is understatedly and elegantly fantasticated. The appearance of a bee is a rare occurrence in the world of this story; and that’s the only hint we receive that we may be reading about a near future.

When Marek writes about the future (or an alternative present), there’s usually a greater degree of difference than that; but he’s always primarily concerned with the characters and their relationships. ‘Tamagotchi’ sees a new, more sophisticated, generation of those virtual pets on the market. Young Luke has a Tamagotchi which is sick, and spreading that sickness to other children’s pets; one parent asks that he keep away from the other children at a birthday party. But Luke is also epileptic, and his parents talk about him having a “design fault”: the stigma of having a sick Tamagotchi shades into how Luke is treated because of his condition, and affects the way his parents think about him. Sometimes this kind of mirroring extends further outwards: in ‘A Thousand Seams’, a mother clutches her ill son in the midst of a protest and tells him, ‘”WI’m going to make everything okay”. It’s an open question whether the boy or society is more threatened by having too much pressure placed on their respective weak points.

The collection ends with ‘Earthquakes’, which tells of a boy named Toby who has a rare condition that induces seizures which have external effects. The effect is different in each case (Toby’s seizures cause earth tremors), but no children with the syndrome have yet lived into their teens. The format of this story gives it a slightly different tone from most of the others in The Stone Thrower: it’s written as a generic fundraising letter – the details of the case are specific, but there’s just a placeholder for the recipient. So we have a curious mix of the personal and impersonal: there’s enough of a story about the text that it carries emotional weight; but there is also a sense that it may all be fake, a marketing document generated to drum up sympathy and cash. Even if we accept ‘Earthquakes’ as genuine, it feels like a lonely cry in the dark, because the mother writing this letter doesn’t know if anyone will ever read it. But, as ever in Marek’s stories, the adult characters will go to any length for their children if the circumstances demand it.

This book has been shortlisted for the 2013 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Click here to read my other posts on the shortlist.

“When you change countries, perhaps your old self stays fixed to your back, like a turtle’s shell”

4th June 2013 / / 3 Comments

Emma Donoghue, Astray (2012)

Emma Donoghue is best- known for her contemporary novel Room (2010), but most of her fiction to date has been historical, as is the story collection Astray. Some of these tales dramatise the lives of specific (though often largely forgotten) characters from history, others create fictional faces for real events; but all are based to some degree on incidents of travel to, from, or within North America.

Donoghue has a keen eye for an interesting or unusual story. The very first piece in the book, ‘Man and Boy’ is about Jumbo, an elephant who was sold to Barnum’s circus; as narrator, his keeper in London narrates his sorrow and frustration at having to let Jumbo go. In ‘The Widow’s Cruse’, a New York attorney named Huddlestone thinks he has the measure of Mrs Gomez, a young widow who comes seeking his services. The stage is set for Huddlestone to make a pretty penny – but all is not quite as it seems. Mrs Gomez and Huddlestone both create strong impressions in the reader; these two stories illustrate what we see time and again in Astray – history painted in bold colours or from unexpected angles.

Two of my favourite stories in the collection alternate between perspectives, to considerable effect. ‘The Gift’ tells of a girl given up for adoption in the late 19th century, and the battle fought over her by the girl’s birth mother and adoptive father. This story is told entirely in the form of letters written to the anonymous adoption agency – so the two narrators never communicate directly, and the girl’s voice is never even heard. The poignancy of ‘The Gift’ lies in the sense of a life being pushed around by forces beyond the individual’s control, and that any hope of a resolution lies impossibly far away.

‘Counting the Days’ moves between Jane and Henry Johnson: she is on the last day of a voyage from Belfast to Québec, where he already waits. But, while Jane looks forward to a joyful reunion and a new life together in Canada, Henry is unwell – and we know that Jane’s dreams are not to be. Donoghue presents  this piece without breaks between scenes, which not only emphasises the closeness, the mirroring of the two protagonists; it also denies the reader space to separate the two mentally. We’re not reading about two chains of events, but about a single one that spirals down to a bitterly ironic conclusion. The characters in Astray may travel, but not all of their journeys finish.

This book has been shortlisted for the 2013 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Click here to read my other posts on the shortlist.

(Read some other reviews of Astray: Jessica Freeman-Slade for The Millions; Fran Slater for Bookmunch; Josh Goller for Spectrum Culture.)

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Adam Thirlwell

24th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Adam Thirlwell, one of two writers from Granta’s 2003 list to appear again in the 2013 selection, contributes ‘Slow Motion’, whose protagonist, Edison Lo, who wakes up in a motel room next to a girl he’s picked up, and returns later that day to find her dead. I didn’t check the biographical note until after I’d finished reading Thirlwell’s piece, and so was not aware that ‘Slow Motion’ was a novel extract. It actually works quite well as a discrete piece, though I’m not sure how well Edison’s narrative voice – dense, but woven from banalities and pop-culture imagery – would fare at novel-length. It’s just fine for these twenty pages, though.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Taiye Selasi

22nd May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Taiye Selasi is the newest novelist on the Granta list, with her debut, Ghana Must Go, published only last month. I’m interested to read it, because there’s something about her story in the anthology. ‘Driver’ is narrated by Webster, an industrialist’s chauffeur whose job is to see nothing, even though he can’t help but look. There’s a subtle rhythm to Selasi’s prose, which I like; and she examines a number of tensions – between different cultures and individual outlooks, education and wealth, principles and desires. It’s a promising taster for Selasi’s work.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

“We all trailed home along the sleeping streets, with youth packed away, and life about to begin”

19th May 2013 / / 3 Comments

Kevin Barry, Dark Lies the Island (2012)

In the title story of Kevin Barry’s second collection, the protagonist Sara has travelled to the edge of Clew Bay, County Mayo, which seems to her father quite a desolate spot to be heading in October. Ostensibly, Sara has gone there to work on some art projects during her year out; but it is soon clear that she is at Clew Bay to get away from it all, in the most final sense. Sara’s human contact is largely limited to the other members of an internet forum accessed on her holiday home’s creaky dial-up; for the rest of the time, it’s just the landscape of Clew Bay and the inside of Sara’s own head, ‘the itch of her blood as it sped’. ‘Dark Lies the Island’ is an intensely discomfiting piece that ends with an ambiguity, perhaps a fragile hope.

So I’ve headed this review with a quotation which refers to life beginning, then I immediately launch into talking about a story that hovers on the verge of death. But that is both the breadth of life which Barry fits into his stories, and that there’s always a sense within them that life carries on, bringing with it variously hope and melancholy. In a few pages, ‘Across the Rooftops’ brilliantly captures the uncertainty of youthful attraction, as its student narrator tries to read the signs of the girl he’s with, waiting for the right moment to make a move that could take their journey of the last few months to its next stage, or end it altogether. The men in ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’ have all been hurt or damaged in some way; and what seems at first like a jolly outing to sample some pubs may actually be the only thing holding these men together. Whatever happens, there’ll always be another pub to try, and the possibility of a fine ale.

This is one of Barry’s common techniques: to show how his characters use external events as a shield or distraction from what is happening deeper inside. ‘Wifey Redux’ begins with its narrator. Jonathan, describing his fairytale marriage to his school sweetheart, Saoirse –  but he has already warned us that the tale will end with his being arrested. And, sure enough, cracks begin to show in the couple’s relationship as their daughter Ellie grows up, becoming the image of her mother as she was. Jonathan takes a dislike to Ellie’s new boyfriend, and is increasingly uncomfortable with the thought of his daughter doing the same sorts of things that he and Saoirse did at her age. As we come to  see, though, Jonathan is not so much protecting Ellie’s honour as he is trying to reassert himself when he feels that what he had – what he was – is slipping from his grasp.

Some of the tales in Dark Lies the Island shift the general tone of the collection quite effectively. ‘Ernestine and Kit’ starts off as a whimsical road-trip taken by two chatty old women, but gradually turns more sinister, as Barry ups the ante more than once. Then there are the stories where Barry’s humour – often a subtle undercurrent – comes strongly to the fore: ‘Berlin Arkonaplatz – My Lesbian Summer’ sees 21-year-old Patrick spend an odyssey of a summer with the fabulous Silvija (‘By her own reckoning, Silvija was at this time the most brilliant fashion photographer in all of Berlin. This didn’t mean that she got paid’). The narrator of ‘Fjord of Killary’ bought a hotel which came with idiosyncratic locals (‘The primary interest of these people’s lives, it often seemed, was how far one place was from another, and how long it might take to complete the journey, given the state of the roads’), and is now coming to the end of his tether. For Patrick, the summer is – of course – too wonderful to last; but something happens which allows the hotelier to find his feet once more. There’s life moving on again, bringing or ending joy.

This book has been shortlisted for the 2013 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Click here to read my other posts on the shortlist.

(Elsewhere: see what RobAroundBooks and Valerie O’Riordan (writing for Bookmunch) had to say about Dark Lies the Island.)

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Evie Wyld

14th May 2013 / / 2 Comments

Evie Wyld’s After the Fire, a Still Small Voice was one of my favourite reads of 2009; so naturally I’ve been looking forward to her second novel, All the Birds, Singing (published in June). Her Granta piece, ‘After the Hedland’, is taken from that novel. We meet Jake, a woman on a sheep station somewhere in Australia; she’s on the run, but her past is about to catch up with her.

‘After the Hedland’ is perhaps best seen as a portrait of a period in Jake’s life. Wyld captures the rough edges and physicality of Jake’s work and lifestyle. Jake herself proves to be an intriguing character: I ended up wanting to know more about where she’d come from and where she was going – which takes me back to anticipating the novel once more.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Update, 11/08/13

I’ve now read All the Birds, Singing, and you’ll find my review here. Doing that has certainly changed the context of ‘After the Hedland’ – I don’t think I twigged that its three sections were arranged in reverse chronological order, for one thing. And my comment about wanting to know more about where Jake had come from and where she was going makes me smile now I’ve read the book; unwittingly, I was closer to it than I could have imagined.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: David Szalay

12th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Beyond seeing a couple of his novels in the shops, I had no prior knowledge of David Szalay’s work. In all honesty, his Granta piece, ‘Europa’, did nothing for me. It tells of three people who travel from Hungary to London for a job which remains unspecified, at least at first – but the strong sense is that it’s not going to be something of which the mother we meet in the opening scene would approve. I don’t really know what else to say, because I never felt as though I got any purchase on ‘Europa’. Maybe it will fare better in the context of an entire work, but it doesn’t seem to stand alone well.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Nadifa Mohamed

10th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Now we come to the first author in the Granta anthology whom I’ve previously reviewed on this blog – twice, in fact. A few years ago, I enjoyed both Nadifa Mohamed’s debut novel, Black Mamba Boy, and her short story ‘Summer in the City’. Now we have ‘Filsan’, a piece taken from Mohamed’s forthcoming second book. The title character is a young soldier sent from Hargeisa in northern Somalia on a mission to three border villages which are sheltering rebels. I think ‘Filsan’ works better as a series of snapshots than as a complete piece, but it has some strong moments. Especially powerful for me is the moment when, on being startled by a village elder, Filsan reflexively squeezes her gun’s trigger – and simply cannot process the fact that she has caused someone’s death. I’ll look forward to reading that new novel.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Naomi Alderman

9th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

I heard Naomi Alderman read from her novel The Liars’ Gospel at an event in 2012. It is a mystery to me why I’ve not yet got around to reading the book, because I thought Alderman’s excerpt was superb – visceral (literally so, as it described the ritual sacrifice of a lamb) and evocative. Her story in the Granta anthology, ‘Soon and In Our Days’, is very different, but just as good.

We join the Rosenbaum family at their home in Hendon for Passover. As the father of the household recites the verses that call forth the Prophet Elijah, down comes Elijah, fiery chariot and all, saying, ‘Happy Passover to you. Have I missed much?’ What follows is a comedy of misunderstanding (‘What is “Yogacizing”? And “The 30-day Body Cleanse?” Some sort of ritual bath?’) and situation (how are the Rosenbaums going to look after those fiery horses?) that made me laugh out loud. Alderman’s straight-faced tone makes the story, but she also captures how the locals’ rather English reserve rubs up against Elijah’s directness. Great stuff, which further underlines that I ought to read more of Alderman’s work.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

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