Category: Short Fiction

Book notes: Ian Sales and Simona Sparaco

17th November 2012 / / 3 Comments

Ian Sales, Adrift on the Sea of Rains (2012)

Colonel Vance Peterson and colleagues are stranded on their moon base, trying to find a way home. Well, not ‘home’ exactly, because the Earth they knew has been destroyed in nuclear war. Rather, the crew of Falcon Base are using a piece of mysterious Nazi technology to reveal alternate versions of Earth from branching points in history, in the hope that one will be hospitable – and that they’ll be able to travel there.

What I knew in advance about Ian Sales’ fiction was that he was interested in combining a literary approach with proper hard science; I think he’s pulled that off in this novella. He gives a sense of the technicalities of space travel and life on Falcon Base (part of the alternate Apollo program sketched out in the book’s extensive glossary), as well as evoking the desolation and psychological effects of being isolated as Peterson’s crew are.

Most interestingly for me, Sales plays the literary and scientific idioms against each other. The accoutrements of living in space stand for restriction (for example, anger is not so easily expressed when you’re in low gravity and can walk only as well as Velcro slippers allow), but those technical terms also represent the astronauts’ comfort zone, the sphere where they know what they’re doing – and this is what ultimately turns against them. Sales has three more novellas planned in his ‘Apollo Quartet’ – I look forward to seeing where they head.

Simona Sparaco, About Time (2010/2)
Translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis

Svevo Romano would seem to have it all, for a given value of ‘all’ – looks, money, career success, the pick of attractive women to string along or use for one night stands. It may not be commendable behaviour, but it suits Svevo just fine, thank you very much. And then he starts to experience mysterious jumps in time: he’ll miss important work meetings when a couple of hours pass in a moment; or his sleep will be disrupted when morning comes too early. Svevo addresses his story to Father Time, as he tries to find a way out of this spiral.

About Time is an amiable morality tale that works neatly at the metaphorical level as well as the literal – think of Svevo as letting his playboy lifestyle get out of hand, and the effects are much the same as if time really is speeding up for him. But I can’t escape the feeling that it’s all a bit too simplistic – that the characterisation of Svevo veers too close to caricature, and that the moral provided by the solution to Svevo’s predicament feels too obvious . I would be interested in reading more of Simona Sparaco’s work, but About Time is a little too unambiguous for my taste.

Still: ‘How to Make a Zombie’ by Deborah Klaassen

16th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: in a workshop, a clock face dangles from a single wire, with further electrics bunched together in front.

The story: Tatty is disillusioned with university until she meets philosophy lecturer Daniel Perkins – at last, it seems, she’s found someone who is actually interested in intellectual conversation. When she wonders how he manages to get everything done, Perkins offers to teach Tatty his secret method of slowing down time – and this absorbing read takes a shocking turn.

Link: Deborah Klaassen’s blog

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

Still: ‘Still’ by S.L. Grey

15th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a row of pale green doors, with a board advertising a raffle half-visible behind one that’s open.

The story: a two-page piece by S.L. Grey (the collaborative pseudonym of Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg), set at a funfair. Fragmented dialogue contributes to a sense of unease, as we uncover the horror of the narrator’s predicament. Definitely a story that carries greater force than its length might suggest.

Links: S.L. Grey’s website / interview with Grey on their story

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

Still: ‘The Owl at the Gate’ by Nicholas Hogg

14th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the decoration of an owl on top of a wrought-iron gate.

The story: with his mother dead and father away at war, the protagonist lives with his bullying cousin Maria. Escaping the house one day, he runs into a local man who’s as happy as Maria to take advantage of the boy’s timidity – but help is at hand from an unexpected source. I like the ambiguity in the ending of this piece, and especially how it illuminates the narrator’s character.

Link: Nicholas Hogg’s website

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

Short Story Week: some favourite collections

13th November 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s National Short Story Week, so I’ve decided to dig into my archives and highlight some of my favourite story collections from the last few years. The links are to my original reviews, and the list is in alphabetical order of author’s surname. All come warmly recommended by me.

Nina Allan, The Silver Wind – five interlinked tales of ‘time disrupted’, though it may be the gaps between pieces that hold the real story.

Chris Beckett, The Turing Test – a very human take on science-fictional staples.

Hassan Blasim, The Madman of Freedom Square – a collection examining how stories shape people’s experiences of war.

China Miéville, Looking for Jake – a varied sampler that made me look at Miéville’s work anew.

Keith Ridgway, Hawthorn & Child – a mosaic novel which dismantles the comfort of narrative coherence.

Robert Shearman, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical / Everyone’s Just So So Special – the fantastic and the everyday combine in two superlative collections exploring themes of love and history.

Shortfire Press launch titles – three fine stories by Nadifa Mohamed, Laura Dockrill, and Elizabeth Jenner.

A.C. Tillyer, An A-Z of Possible Worlds – a collage of stories portraying imaginary places, with each tale in its own booklet.

David Vann, Legend of a Suicide – one version of events is not enough to tell the truth of a family tragedy.

Lucy Wood, Diving Belles – contemporary stories drawing on Cornish folklore.

Still: ‘In the Dressing Room Mirror’ by Claire Massey

12th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a shabby, utilitarian dressing room, with a row of plain square mirrors and the overhead lamps that would have illuminated them.

The story: a woman describes the envy she had as a child for another girl who was a much more natural dancer than she – and the repercussions that still affect her to this day. Its supernatural twist gives this tale a very effective chill.

Links: Claire Massey’s website / interview with Massey on her story

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

Still: ‘Opportunity’ by Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

10th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a poster in a maintenance room, advertising repair of electric motors.

The story: it starts with a power cut – something the protagonist and her daughter Thembi are used to. Mhangami-Ruwende explores the difficulties faced by her characters as they try to get on with their lives in contemporary Zimbabwe. In particular, Thembi wants to get an education in order to have more options – but, just like the light she needs to study by, her way forward may be precarious. ‘Opportunity’ provides an elegant and broad examination of its issues.

Links: Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende / interview with Mhangami-Ruwende about her story

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

Still: ‘Ten a Day’ by Jan Woolf

7th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a clock (showing five past ten) on a bare stone wall, off-centre as we view the image. Part of a blue board can be seen below the clock.

The story: a woman thinks about how much better life would be – how much more time there’d be – if the 24-hour clock were replaced with the decimal time used in the French Republic. What gives this story its edge is a clear sense that this is a false hope, and that the protagonist can’t move on in life because she won’t let go of the idea.

Links: Jan Woolf’s website / interview with Woolf about her story

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

Book notes: John Grant and Sam Hawken

5th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

John Grant, The Lonely Hunter (2012)

Full disclosure: John Grant is a friend – but I knew his fiction first of all, and this novella from PS Publishing is as good as ever. Our narrator is one Emil Martenson, a writer recalling how he first met his wife Natalie. At the time, she was married to Danny Lerner, a best-selling American novelist living in luxury in France. The much less successful Emil had taken on a commission to interview Lerner – which was interrupted by the latter’s untimely death. It wouldn’t be until many years later that Emil would meet Natalie again and discover the truth about the erratic shape of Lerner’s career; why he veered so dramatically between long periods of being withdrawn and bursts of passionate articulacy; and the real reason for Lerner’s death.

As a murder mystery, The Lonely Hunter plays the game with its red herrings and twists. But Grant’s novella is about more than that: Emil is open about the fact that he has changed some of the identifying details of his tale, and muses over the differences between real life and fiction. This is what I think is at the heart of The Lonely Hunter: individuals creating stories about themselves and others, to the extent that they become fictional characters, of a sort – and you’ll close the book wondering exactly where the boundaries between reality and fiction lie.

Sam Hawken, Tequila Sunset (2012)

At the start of Tequila Sunset, Flip Morales is released from prison and returns home to El Paso, Texas – but he can’t leave his gangland past behind.

Soon he is reluctantly caught up in one his gang’s drug trafficking operations while also acting as a police informant. Two further protagonists are police officers investigating the gang’s activities: Cristina Salas in El Paso, and Matías Segura over the Mexican border in Ciudad Juárez. As the big job goes down all three characters find their lives at risk and their close relationships tested to the limit.

Sam Hawken pitches the tone of his second novel just right: this is a book that deals with violent and brutal subject matter, but it never feels gratuitous or sensationalist. Each narrative thread is anchored in everyday concerns: Flip’s trying to make good in work and life; Cristina’s concern for her young son; Matías’s relationship with his wife.

The sense you get is of people doing what they can in the face of social issues almost too great to comprehend. Hawken makes the point that the gang is greater than its individual parts: that if someone’s removed there will always be another to take their place. Even as Tequila Sunset resolves, you know there’s more out there that we haven’t even seen, that the story Hawken tells is part of a much broader canvas of events. The novel is a thrilling ride, but it also makes you appreciate the seriousness behind it.

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

Still: ‘Waiting’ by Justin Hill

2nd November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a view of a derelict work-room or store-room, with peeling walls and debris piled on surfaces.

The story: a well-constructed mosaic of events from Justin Hill’s life, with recurring themes of memory and going through doors – and the melancholy undercurrent of knowing that, once you’ve gone through a door in life, you can’t go back.

Links: Justin Hill’s website / interview with Hill on his story

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

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