Category: Short Fiction

Angela Slatter, ‘The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter’ (2011)

8th October 2011 / / 2 Comments

Quieter in tone than the previous three, Angela Slatter‘s story concerns Hepsibah Ballantyne, a coffin-maker who arrives at the D’Aguillar household to deal with the recently-deceased father, and takes rather a shine to young Lucette D’Aguillar while she’s there. The coffin-maker’s trade is particularly important in this fictional world: get the rituals wrong, and the spirits of the dead will remain behind — as Hepsibah herself knows, because her own dead father, Hector, never leaves her side. The atmosphere of this story builds up quite nicely — Slatter evokes Hepsibah’s burgeoning attraction towards Lucette particularly well — and the  complexities of Heispibah’s character are revealed gradually and effectively.

Rating: ***½

Peter Crowther, ‘Ghosts with Teeth’ (2011)

5th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Hugh and Angie Ritter return home to Tuboise, Maine (popn. 41), to find that something’s not right — people keep disappearing suddenly, or are in places they cannot possibly be. It’s Hallowe’en, and something is about to come trick-or-treating… Peter Crowther‘s story builds its atmosphere slowly, using commonplace things — a radio in the background, a phone call from a familiar voice — that turn abruptly sinister. The ending is also effective, making good use of the fact that, in a community as small as Tuboise, everyone knows each other — something that could have good consequences or bad.

Rating: ***½

Caitlín R. Kiernan, ‘Charcloth, Firesteel and Flint’ (2011)

4th October 2011 / / 3 Comments

A woman (spirit? Salamander in human form? Even she isn’t sure) who has an affinity for fire hitches a ride with Billy to a motel somewhere off the Interstate. All her talk is of fire, and Billy will see plenty of that when they reach their destination. Like King’s story, this starts with a conversation between two people and leads up to a supernatural denouement; Kiernan’s tale doesn’t quite get under the skin as much as King’s, but it has greater consistency between beginning and end, and rounds off with a neat little twist.

Rating: ***

Link
Caitlín R. Kiernan’s website

Stephen King, ‘The Little Green God of Agony’ (2011)

3rd October 2011 / / 2 Comments

Well, you can’t start a horror anthology with a bigger name than Stephen King, so it’s clear straight away that A Book of Horrors means business. King’s story, however, doesn’t blow me away. Andrew Newsome, the world’s sixth-richest man, is in chronic pain after surviving an air crash; unable to find answers in conventional medicine (though Newsome’s put-upon nurse, Kat MacDonald – ‘a piece of human furniture in this big house [p. 1]’ – is more of the opinion that he has unrealistic expectations, and won’t put in the effort to help his treatment along), he turns to one Reverend Rideout, who claims that he can exorcise the source of Newsome’s pain. Kat is sceptical; but this is a horror story…

When the monster (for of course there is one) makes its appearance, the story comes into its own and is properly creepy. However, I don’t find the lead-up to that point – the conversation between Newsome and Rideout, with a storm blowing outside – quite so effective; it seems to me too conventionally-handled to fully create the kind of atmosphere for which it’s aiming. On balance, though,‘The Little Green God of Agony’ is worth reading for the ending.

Rating: ***

Stephen Jones (ed.), A Book of Horrors (2011)

3rd October 2011 / / 2 Comments

Launching a speculative fiction imprint with a lavish hardback horror anthology is a bold move, so good on Jo Fletcher Books for doing exactly that. Jo Fletcher is one of the most respected publishers in the sf field;, after many years at Gollancz, she has now joined Quercus to launch her own imprint. A Book of Horrors is the second book to be published under the Fletcher banner, a set of fifteen brand new stories, which I’ll be reviewing on here one at a time.

The book’s editor, Stephen Jones, sets out his stall in an introduction:

These days our bloodsuckers are more likely to show their romantic nature, werewolves work for covert government organisations, phantoms are private investigators and the walking dead can be found sipping tea amongst the polite society of a Jane Austen novel.

These are not the iconic figures of fear and wonder that we grew up with. These are not the Creatures of the Night that have scared multiple generations over the centuries and forced countless small children to hide under the bedclothes reading their books and comics by torchlight.

[…]

With A Book of Horrors we hope that we have lived up to that title and all that it implies.

Well, let’s find out. Here are the stories Jones has selected:

Certainly there are some excellent writers on that list; I look forward to seeing what chills they supply in this book.

D.W. Wilson, ‘The Dead Roads’ (2010)

28th September 2011 / / 3 Comments

On to David Wilson’s winning story, which is now available to read on the Guardian website. It tells of a road trip taken across Canada by Duncan (our narrator), Vic (his girlfriend – when she’s not at university, at least), and their old school-friend Animal Brooks. Tensions build among the trio as Duncan realises that he might be about to lose Vic when she returns to university, where he can’t follow; and he starts to wonder, too, whether Animal is getting too close to Vic.

Out of all the shortlisted stories, I think this one creates the strongest atmosphere. There’s a wonderfully sharp edge to Wilson’s prose that complements the harsh bleakness of the setting. I’m particularly impressed with how the secondary characters leap off the page, even though Duncan’s voice is so strong itself; for example, I loved the initial description of Animal Brooks:

He was twenty-six and hunted looking, with engine-grease stubble and red eyes sunk past his cheekbones. In his commie hat and Converses he had that hurting lurch, like a scrapper’s swag, dragging foot after foot with his knees loose and his shoulders slumped. He’d drink a garden hose under the table if it looked at him wrong…

‘The Dead Roads’ is a deserving winner, to my mind, and makes me keen to read more of Wilson’s work. I see that he’s had a collection, Once You Break a Knuckle, published in Canada this month; I think it will be worth investigating.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

K.J. Orr, ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’ (2010)

28th September 2011 / / 1 Comment

The first of two entries on the shortlist by PhD students, Katherine Orr’s piece concerns Eleanor Francis, the British wife of an American astronaut freshly back from space. The couple’s opening exchange, as Eleanor greets her husband on his return, sets the tone for the rest of the story:

‘How are you?’ she said.

A lop-sided smile. ‘I’m A-OK.’

‘So what have you been up to?’

‘Stuff,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘Oh, stuff.’

All manner of possible sights and experiences are subsumed under the word ‘stuff’, as an indication that Eleanor and her husband (whose name we never learn) don’t know how to talk about what has happened. ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’ is an exploration of the ways in which the couple have become dislocated from life and each other. The rhythms of the astronaut’s body-clock are off, so he’s asleep in the daytime and awake at night; he also finds it easier to talk to his fellow-astronauts than to his wife (that Eleanor only knows his colleagues by their nicknames further emphasises her distance from that world). In her turn, the life Eleanor knew was disrupted when she had to move to the US; now that her husband has changed, she’s losing that one anchor she had. But, towards the end of the story, Eleanor finds a place and circumstance that may allow her to understand something of what her man has been through.

Orr handles her theme very well, right down to the fragmented structure of the narrative. The author’s biography in the back of the anthology says that she is working on a story collection; on the evidence of this piece, it should be interesting.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

Jon McGregor, ‘Wires’ (2011)

27th September 2011 / / 1 Comment

This is the second year running in which Jon McGregor has been shortlisted for the Award, which would be notable in itself; but, more than that, it’s also the second time in a row that has been runner-up. I very much liked McGregor’s nominated story last year; and he’s written another superb piece in this time around. ‘Wires’ is the story of a student named Emily Wilkinson who has an accident on the motorway when a sugar-beet smashes through her windscreen. Whilst waiting for the police to arrive, she dwells on her life, particularly her relationship with doctoral candidate Marcus, over which she has her doubts.

As with last year’s story, I’m struck by how completely McGregor evokes his protagonist’s mindset through his prose. The title of ‘Wires’ seemingly refers to neural pathways; and the rambling, jagged passages of narration evoke the feeling of a mind working than one can comprehend. Here, for example, is the opening of the story:

It was a sugar-beet, presumably, since that was a sugar-beet lorry in front of her and this thing turning in the air at something like sixty miles an hour had just fallen off it. It looked sort of like a giant turnip, and was covered in mud, and basically looked more or less like whatever she would have imagined a sugar-beet to look like if she’d given it any thought before now. Which she didn’t think she had. It was totally filthy. They didn’t make sugar out of that, did they? What did they do, grind it? Cook it?

All this and more goes through Emily’s mind before the sugar-beet even hits her car. Her thoughts flit from subject to subject in this way, with these lengthier passages punctuated by terser dialogue from the two men who saw Emily’s accident and have come to help; when they speak, the effect is of reality intruding in on the world of thought, in order to reassert itself.

McGregor also uses his narrative style to subtly suggest that maybe Emily hasn’t been left as unscathed by the incident as she had assumed. I’d say ‘Wires’ was a worthy runner-up, and will be interested to see how the winning story compares.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

Alison MacLeod, ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ (2011)

27th September 2011 / / 2 Comments

‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ was originally published in Litmus, an anthology of stories concerning key moments of scientific discovery. Denis Noble is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford, and pioneered virtual modelling of the human heart; he acted as an adviser to Alison MacLeod on the telling of this story, which sees a fictional Noble undergo a heart transplant, and dramatises episodes from the scientist’s earlier life and career.

I think this is a beautifully balanced piece of fiction. By turns, MacLeod’s prose has the precision of detail one would expect from a scientist’s viewpoint; and some wonderfully poetic moments, such as this, describing Noble’s earliest development:

Soon, the tube that was Denis Noble’s heart, a delicate scrap of mesoderm, would push towards life. In the dark of Ethel [Noble’s mother], it would twist and grope, looping blindly back towards itself in the primitive knowledge that circulation, the vital whoosh of life, deplores a straight line.

The story conveys both a sense of the demanding nature of Noble’s work (the computer he needs to use is only available between two and four in the morning, then it’s off to the slaughterhouse to buy a couple of sheeps’ hearts, before a twelve-hour day in the lab), and the scientist’s frustration at not being able to apprehend the true nature of love, for all his knowledge (“Where, he’d like to know, is love? How is love?”).

I could see this piece as an award-winner. Certainly it sets the bar high for the eventual runner-up and winner, both of which I’ve yet to read.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

M.J. Hyland, ‘Rag Love’ (2010)

27th September 2011 / / 1 Comment

In 1960s Sydney, James Brailey (if that is his real name; it’s never confirmed) and his partner Trudy attempt to trick or bribe their way into a penthouse cabin on board the SS Oriana, so they can live out their fantasy of luxury for a short while, before the liner leaves port. I say ‘their’ fantasy, but it’s really Trudy’s; James has gone along with her dream because he loves her, even though he knows they can’t really afford the money they’re using as a bribe.

This is what M.J. Hyland does particularly well in ‘Rag Love’: to show that this act of apparently throwing cares to the wind masks a relationship under strain. James has doubts about Trudy’s feelings for him (“I was certain she’d want the money and the ocean cruise no matter what bloke she was with”), and Trudy seems to have little concern for anything beyond her immediate dream. That then sets up a tension over not only whether the couple’s plan will succeed, but also what will happen to their relationship with each other. I’m not sure that Hyland’s piece quite has the extra spark I’d hope to see from a story on an award shortlist, but it’s a good read nonetheless.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

Archives

Browse posts by author, original language of book, or post category

© 2025 David's Book World

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑

%d