Category: Short Fiction

Reggie Oliver, ‘A Child’s Problem’ (2011)

14th November 2011 / / 3 Comments

Oliver takes as his inspiration for this story Richard Dadd’s painting, The Child’s Problem; he imagines a possible origin for that artwork in the childhood of Sir George St Maur, a social reformer who (says the tale’s preface) visited Dadd in Broadmoor throughout the 1850s (I’ve been unable to find any reference to St Maur online, so am unsure whether he’s a genuine historical figure, or Oliver’s creation).

Nine-year-old George goes to live in his uncle Augustus’s country house, to be tutored until he is ready for Eton. Augustus is a strange figure, forever with a problem set up on his chessboard, but unwilling to actually have a game; he sets challenges for George, but gets angry when the boy completes them – and strange figures can be glimpsed through the windows of the house.

Stylistically, Oliver’s story is closer to the classic supernatural tale than is generally my taste, but the logic underlying what happens is handed very effectively: revealed enough to allow one to formulate an understanding, but also hidden enough that it remains mysterious and creepy.

Rating: ***½

Three Pieces: Granta 117 – Horror

11th November 2011 / / 2 Comments

Today, I’m trying out a different approach to blogging about an anthology, by concentrating on three particular pieces from it. The anthology in question is the Autumn 2011 issue of Granta, whose theme is ‘Horror’. It was my first time reading all three of these authors; I’ll go through their work in the order in which it appears in the anthology.

Will Self, ‘False Blood’

This is an account of how Self was diagnosed with and treated for polycythemia vera, a condition which causes the blood to thicken through the overproduction of red blood cells. It’s a very frank piece: Self writes matter-of-factly about his past of drug-use – neither apologising not seeking to justify it, but simply treating it as something that happened – and how it left him afraid of needles, which made his treatment (by having excess blood extracted) all the more difficult.

The horror of ‘False Blood’ seems to me to lie less in the mechanics of Self’s illness and treatment (though there is certainly some of that, and you may well find yourself picturing the blood flowing – or otherwise – through your own veins) than in something more existential. Self reflects on death and disease, and how we dress them up in metaphors in the vain hope of making them more palatable – and comes to the conclusion that it’s better to confront those phenomena without metaphors. But Self acknowledges that disease has been one of the key metaphors he has deployed in his fiction.

So, just as the very blood-flow which sustains Self’s life is now threatening it, so a cornerstone of his life’s work has gained a chillingly personal resonance. Perhaps the true horror of this piece comes from the thought of being betrayed by the most familiar and trusted of things.

Rajesh Parameswaran, ‘The Infamous Bengal Ming’

A tiger wakes up one day (“the worst and most amazing day of my life,” p. 167) and realises that he feels love – the love that comes from a deep friendship – for his keeper, Kitch. But where is Kitch today? Ming is getting hungry and wants to see his keeper and friend. When Kitch finally arrives, he’s with another, rather nervous, member of zoo staff; the tiger’s friendly move towards Kitch scares the other man, so Kitch strikes Ming with his stick – and then it all goes wrong.

When I started reading ‘The Infamous Bengal Ming’, I thought Parameswaran’s decision to give the tiger such a fluent, human-like narrative voice was amusing but perhaps misjudged – surely that wasn’t how an animal would really think? But now I see that the voice was judged perfectly, because the affect of the story is founded on the tension between the measured, reasonable tone of the narration, and the way Ming’s animal instincts intrude upon it. It’s not just that the tiger tends to misinterpret the human characters’ behaviour; it’s also that the way he reacts and explains himself can be at odds (sometimes chillingly so) with what his voice lulls us into expecting. This story is extracted from Parameswaran’s forthcoming collection, I Am an Executioner, to which I now look forward eagerly.

Julie Otsuka, ‘Diem Perdidi’

Diem perdidi is Latin for “I have lost the day”, which sums up what has happened to the woman with dementia who is at the heart of this story. The text consists mainly of declarative statements about what the woman does and doesn’t remember (sometimes addressed directly to the woman’s daughter – though neither character is ever named). With what might seem to be a rather restricted palette, Otsuka paints vividly what has passed in the lives of the woman and her family; and what is now being lost, the little cruelties of (and those caused by) being able to remember the relatively distant past, and long-held routines, but not what happened a few minutes before. Otsuka’s prose is dotted with poignant turns of phrase, such as: “She remembers that today is Sunday, which six days out of seven is not true” (p. 252). Clearly another writer whom I need to read further.

Elsewhere
Granta magazine
Author websites: Will Self; Julie Otsuka.
Read an abridged version of ‘False Blood’ on the Guardian website.
Additional content on the Granta site.

Lisa Tuttle, ‘The Man in the Ditch’ (2011)

9th November 2011 / / 1 Comment

Linzi and J.D. are driving to their new house in the Norfolk countryside when Linzi thinks she sees a dead body in a ditch at the side of the road. As the couple renovate the property, thoughts of the dead man continue to play on LInzi’s mind, though J.D. is convinced that she’s mistaken. The initial shock seeing the corpse is very well-handled, as Tuttle lulls the reader into a false sense of security with the neutral tone of her description; and she brings the tale around to a satisfying, grimly circular ending.

Rating: ***½

Book and story notes: Gordon, Kenworthy, Pickin

7th November 2011 / / 2 Comments

Helen Gordon, Landfall (2011)

London-based arts critic Alice Robinson is thirty-four, unsure about her place in the world, and haunted by the disappearance of her sister Janey seventeen years previously, when her magazine ‘suspends operations’; taking advantage of her parents’ offer to house-sit for them, she moves back to the suburbs to take stock. Alice’s existence there is enlivened by the arrival of her sixteen-year-old American cousin Emily (who’s been sent over for an improving visit, though she’d rather not be there), and a large dog named Selkirk, whom Alice’s old flatmate Isabel has talked her into looking after (despite Alice’s dislike of dogs). Alice is mostly drifting through life in suburbia when her former editor holds out the possibility of an interview with one of her favourite artists, Karin Ericsson, a recluse who lives on the south coast – could this be the key to Alice’s getting her life back on track?

Helen Gordon’s debut novel is a nicely observed character study, ranging from pithy observations about minor characters (for example, Alice’s artist ex-boyfriend is described as “one of those men of a certain haircut who gravitated towards the east of the city” [pp. 8-9]) to more sustained portrayals of the main players. Alice’s neighbours’ boy, Danny, is a conflicted figure: saved from drowning as a young boy, that piece of great fortune has also made it hard for him to relate to other people (though one senses he ultimately means well), which in turn has led him to dabble in crime. Emily begins as something of a grotesque, obsessed with her body-image to an alarming degree, but, by novel’s end, she is moving towards a more positive view of life; she and Danny come together in a halting, and very real, fashion.

And Alice? She spends a lot of time thinking, but also falls back on instinct, reciting maxims from her Girl Guide and London days. Those recitations may feel forced when she’s at her parents’ house, but Alice’s practical instincts come into their own when she has travelled to the coast. She, like Emily and Danny, makes not so much peace with life, as a kind of messy truce.

Christopher Kenworthy, ‘Sullom Hill’ (2011)

Our narrator recalls his childhood in western Lancashire, in particular his period of friendship with John Stack (“You’d never see him in a group: it was John and one friend for a few weeks and then he’d move on” [p. 6]) and his ambivalent attitude towards learning-disabled Neil Kingsley. The protagonist admires John for his cheek and ability to stand up to his reprimanding teachers – but John’s bravado hides a violent home life, and now he’s picking on Neil.

This is one of the latest chapbooks to be published by Nightjar Press, who specialise in dark fiction at (or beyond) the edges of the supernatural. I make a point of mentioning this here because Kenworthy’s story takes a particularly striking approach to the subgenre. There’s nothing overtly (or even necessarily covertly) fantastical about ‘Sullom Hill’, but Kenworthy portrays John’s behaviour as being rooted in a bargain – maybe not one made with a supernatural agency, but a bargain of a similar kind. Neil’s response to John can be read in an analogous way. The effect of these is to imply a different way of looking at the world, and thereby to disturb the world’s equilibrium – creating a very subtle kind of horror.

Christopher Kenworthy’s website

G.A. Pickin, ‘Remains’ (2011)

The second new title from Nightjar Press takes us to a Scottish moor, where an ill-prepared walker (who is experienced enough that he shouldn’t be in his current predicament, and knows it) leaves behind an abandoned church and the remains of its surrounding settlement, and tries to find his way to the holiday cottage where he’s due to catch up with some friends from an old volunteering project – but the dark and the weather are closing in.

As a story, ‘Remains’ is very much focused on its landscape; Pickin effectively turns what is at first, if not exactly a friendly environment then at least one open to exploration, into somewhere more threatening. The ending is both nicely open and a neat closure.

Robert Shearman, ‘Alice Through the Plastic Sheet’ (2011)

5th November 2011 / / 2 Comments

Alan and Alice thought they knew their neighbours well enough, but discovered embarrassingly otherwise when they learned that Eric had been dead for months, and Barbara was moving out because she couldn’t cope with her feelings of loneliness. New neighbours duly moved in and, though the couple never saw them, they did hear the loud music coming from next door – and that was just the beginning. This unsettling piece features the matter-of-fact treatment of strangeness that Shearman does so well; Alan’s work life and relationship with Alice fray around the edges as the bizarre events proceed. The result is a story that really get’s under one’s skin.

Rating: ****

Link
Robert Shearman’s website

Ramsey Campbell, ‘Getting it Wrong’ (2011)

22nd October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Misanthropic film buff Eric Edgeworth is interrupted one evening by a phone call purporting to be from a radio gameshow; would he be the ‘expert friend’ of the current contestant, Mary Barton, a work colleague he barely knows. Edgeworth is convinced this a hoax being staged by some of his fellow-staff at the Frugoplex cinema; but, as the calls continue and Mary is absent from work, it becomes apparent that something more sinister is happening. This is a typically well-constructed story from Campbell, with a satisfying pay-off and a portrait of the crabby Edgeworth that’s grimly amusing. But there’s a sense of artificiality about the piece – perhaps from the fake brand names used, perhaps from those moments when the characterisation becomes a little too broad-brush – which stops it from being truly creepy.

Rating: ***

Link
Ramsey Campbell’s website

John Ajvide Lindqvist, ‘The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer’ (2011)

16th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Six months after his partner Annelie died in a road accident, our narrator moved with his son Robin to a cheap house in the forest; he got rid of the things he thought were unnecessary, but soon regretted being so rash in destroying Annelie’s things. All that remained was her old piano, which he now insists Robin learn to play. But what is the strange music that the narrator hears his son play, and what does it have to do with the murderer who once lived in their house. This is a great story (excellently translated by Marlaine Delargy), as Lindqvist ratchets up the tension and the sense that the narrator is losing his grip on reality. What makes the tale for me is the wonderful uncertainty or whether the supernatural explanation for events is valid, or whether it’s all in the mind of a desperate father.

Rating: ****

Link
John Ajvide Lindqvist’s website

Dennis Etchison, ‘Tell Me I’ll See You Again’ (2011)

15th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

One sweltering day, Sherron sees her friend David cycle perilously close to his father’s truck… and finds him lying underneath the bicycle, apparently with no breath or heartbeat – yet, a short time later, he’s fine. Could this be some kind of survival mechanism, and what exactly could have brought it on? ‘Tell Me I’ll See You Again’ is a short piece that uses its brevity to great effect; an atmosphere of strangeness and disorientation builds up because we have so little time to grasp what’s going on. And Etchison’s closing sentences are simply beautiful.

Rating: ***½

Brian Hodge, ‘Roots and All’ (2011)

14th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Cousins Dylan and Gina travel to the remote farmhouse of their recently-deceased Grandma Evvie, to sort through her effects; a long-term drug problem has caused the area to go to seed. Never far from Dylan’s mind are Evvie’s old tales of what she called the Woodwalker, and the mystery of his sister Shae’s disappearance eight years previously – a mystery which will be solved by tale’s end. Hodge brings the disparate elements of his story together in unexpected ways, and thre’s a grimly satisfying inevitability about the ending.

Rating: ***

Link
Brian Hodge’s website

Book notes: Hampton-Jones, Fry, Wakling

11th October 2011 / / 2 Comments

Hollis Hampton-Jones, Comes the Night (2011)

Hollis Hampton-Jones’s second novel is a study of nineteen-year-old Meade Harden: bulimic, addicted to prescription drugs, and unhealthily obsessed with her twin brother, Ben Ho. Born in Nashvile, the Harden twins are currently in Paris, where their studies – Meade’s in cookery and Ben’s in art – are being funded by their parents. Concerned that she may be losing her brother’s attention to a girl he met at college, Meade takes up an offer from a fashion photographer, Majid, to get her into the world of modelling – but her downward spiral only continues.

Naturally enough, Comes the Night is very much focused on the character of Meade and her concerns; this has its drawbacks – Meade’s constant returning to the same few topics can become wearying. Yet, at the same time, there are some brutally effective moments, such as when Meade lists the contents of her own vomit as the ingredients of a recipe; and the tight focus on the protagonist’s subjectivity leads to some interesting disorientation – the novel’s sense of place is fragmented, for example, because Meade is so uninterested in the outside world. Comes the Night is a short novel which arrives, does what it does with a single-minded determination, then ends in what by then may be the only possible place.

Links
Hollis Hampton-Jones’s website
Some other reviews of Comes the Night: For Books’ Sake; Bookmunch.

Gary Fry, Abolisher of Roses (2011)

Having read and reviewed (and enjoyed) the first and third titles from Spectral Press, I now skip back for the second; however, I’m not as impressed with this tale as I was with the others. Peter, a successful businessman, travels with his wife Patricia to a gallery in the wilds of North Yorkshire, where some of her paintings are set to form part of an outdoor art trail. Peter has little time for art, or the arty types with whom his wife now associates; but he indulges Patricia’s hobby as something he’s sure she’ll soon get over – and anyway, Peter has his mistress to keep him occupied. Whilst following the art trail, Peter loses his way, and comes across some strange and macabre installations which hit closer to home than he could ever have anticipated.

The key weakness of Abolisher of Roses, I think, is that it could do with a bit more subtlety. Peter is portrayed in quite broad terms as a callous and uncaring businessman who’s contemptuous of his wife; it feels as though Gary Fry is signposting rather too heavily what we’re supposed to think of Peter. I appreciate the elegance of the story’s conceit, that Peter’s begrudging examination of art turns into a searching examination of himself; but I feel that the telling lets it down somewhat.

Link
Gary Fry’s website

Christopher Wakling, What I Did (2011)

Chris Wakling’s latest novel is narrated by six-year-old Billy Wright, who runs off one day while he’s out with his dad Jim. Eventually catching up with Billy as he runs out into a busy road, an exasperated Jim smacks the boy; a passing woman sees this, intervenes, and reports Jim to social services – and so the Wrights’ ordinary family life begins to unravel.

Billy’s narrative voice is a mixture of rambling, malapropisms, and references to the natural world (he loves watching David Attenborough programmes). For example:

I also have to warn you that nobody is bad or good here, or rather everyone is a bit bad and a bit good and the bad and good moluscules get mixed up against each other and produce chemical reactions.

Did you know cheetahs cannot retract their claws? (p. 2)

Over the course of a whole novel, this can be endearing and infuriating by turns; but it works both as a means of establishing Billy’s character, and as a screen between us and the real action of the story. Through that screen, we see that Jim is a loving father, but also that he can have a quick temper, without necessarily even realising. It’s a combination of these factors which makes the situation so difficult for Jim, because as far as he’s concerned, he has done nothing wrong; but it’s not easy for him to see how to present himself in a way that will convince the authorities of that. In its own way, the social-care system which Jim encounters seems just as opaque to him as the adult world is to Billy. What I Did is an effective portrait of innocently-intended actions spiralling out of control, and the difficulties of responding to that.

Links
Christopher Wakling’s website
Some other reviews of What I Did: Just William’s Luck; Isabel Costello; Random Things Through My Letterbox.

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