Tag: short fiction

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.

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.

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