Adventures in reading
In the years following the First World War, Moss’s narrator travels to Germany to look up Hasso von Koekritz, an old acquaintance now working for the Security Police in the Allied-occupied Rhineland. Koekritz finds himself in a difficult position, caught between the people and the occupying forces; matters come to a head at a procession through the town. I can appreciate this story conceptually as a character study of Koekritz, but the writing just does nothing for me.
Rating: **½
The lovely Suzanne Brouette declares that she will marry whichever of the celebrated comedians Robichon and Quinquart is judged the better actor by the people of Paris. The two performers decide that this can only be settled if they take on serious roles, but where to find them? Merrick’s name was unknown to me before reading this anthology, and I discover that his work has mostly fallen into obscurity; that’s unfortunate, because this story was good fun, and I liked the vigour of the prose. I’ll have to see if I can track down any more of Merrick’s writing.
Rating: ****
Nadifa Mohamed, ‘Summer in the City’ (2010)
Laura Dockrill, ‘Topple’ (2010)
Elizabeth Jenner, ‘It Snows They Say on the Sea’ (2010)
It seems there is something of a trend at the moment for publishing individual short stories. To name two publishers doing so, I’ve already come across Nightjar Press and Spectral Press – and now Clare Hey has launched Shortfire Press, which is specialising in electronic-only editions of stories. Shortfire has launched with three titles, and it is a very strong selection.
***
Nadifa Mohamed arrived on the literary scene last year with Black Mamba Boy; I liked that novel (albeit with a few reservations), and I like this story even more. The events of ‘Summer in the City’ take place in London over the course of a few hours, shortly before the birthday of Mohamed’s narrator, Hodan Ismail. Hodan has asked for a bike, and that’s what she’ll get – but not, as she discovers, the one she wanted. That scene, in the middle of the story, is nicely handled, as Hodan tries to reconcile her disappointment at seeing the rusty ‘old woman’s bike’ her father has bought from a neighbour with the feeling that she really ought to be grateful for a gift that her father would hardly be likely to have received as a child, and certainly wouldn’t have grumbled about if he had.
Apart from one or two points in the opening descriptive passage that don’t quite work, the rest of the story is similarly fine. I particularly like Mohamed’s knack for bringing characters to life in a couple of sentences. We meet some characters only in passing, maybe through only a snatched conversation, yet it’s still possible for us to create a vivid picture of them and imagine what their stories might be. The author also has a very good control of mood, as the tale shifts from a light-hearted tone to something more serious. I look forward to Mohamed’s next novel with even greater anticipation than previously.
***
‘Topple’ is the first piece by Laura Dockrill that I’ve read, but it will not be the last. This story documents brilliantly the evolution of the relationship between the narrator and the object of her attention (which is sometimes affectionate, other times not). The tale begins at a swimming pool when both are aged eight, and the girl has the first stirrings of a feeling for which she may not yet even have the concepts (‘I hope I don’t miss you leaving, little red-eyes bellyflopper. Even though boys blatantly aren’t my thing’).
So the story moves forward through the years, never ringing a false note. Now the girl and boy are friends; now they aren’t. He has a girlfriend; it matters; it doesn’t. Growing up. Birthday parties (will he come? does she want him to?). Clubs (will he be there? will he be alone? does he even remember her?). Drinking. Jobs. On. Off. An air of uncertainty (around the relationship, yes, but the girl is also uncertain about herself, to an extent, as she grows up) remains throughout. ‘Topple’ is an incisive contemporary take on will-they/won’t-they – and you’ll have to read it for yourself to find out if they will.
***
The third Shortfire launch story is by a new writer, Elizabeth Jenner. ’It Snows They Say on the Sea’ is a short but effective character study. A couple look back on a week when inclement weather and shift patterns kept them from seeing each other, despite their living under the same roof. They communicated largely through notes left while the other was sleeping. Now (the beginning says), they resolve not to let it happen again: ‘They will buy highlighter pens, make charts, tack planners to the fridge with plastic vegetable magnets.’ But that sounds to me more like a good intention than a serious plan; perhaps, then, the couple can laugh at that week from this distance.
One of them can, anyway. Jenner reveals a fracture in the relationship that has the potential to grow into a deeper division: the woman seems to have shaken off that week, but the man still dwells on it. In carefully detailed prose, we see the myriad little ways he was affected by her absence (or, at times, her proximity), and what the result has been. This story is a great start for Jenner, and – along with the other two pieces here – a superb start for Shortfire Press.
Scudamore, a celebrated painter, reflects on his memories of his cousin, Alicia, who, he feels, has needlessly squandered the opportunities that life brought her way. I’ve got to admit that I don’t know what to make of this story — it is not clear to me whether Galsworthy intends his readers to approve of Scudamore’s stance or to have more sympathy for Alicia. It frustrates me to have to leave a story unreviewed like this, but I have nothing else to say about the piece.
‘Of course, I can convey nothing of that indescribable quality of translucent unreality, that difference from the common things of experience that hung about it all…’
That’s Lionel Wallace, who is telling Wells’s narrator about the magical garden he apparently found (or was it a dream?) as a child on going through a green door in a white wall. Despite coming across that same door several times subsequently, Wallace has never entered it again, though he has thought about it.
That quotation encapsulates neatly the ambivalence I felt towards M.R. James’s story, and feel again towards this one: to me, the best stories of the fantastic do and should ‘convey [the] quality of translucent unreality’ — and I don’t think Wells was writing at a time before there were stories that did so. I find the central metaphor of ‘The Door in the Wall’ (the ambivalence of longing — or not — for escape) eloquent; but there isn’t the true sense of fantasy that I want from a story of this type.
Rating: ***½
Elsewhere
Read the story online
Henri Deplis comes into some money and splashes out on an elaborate tattoo for his back; however, having used up most of his funds, he’s unable to pay, and the tattoo (hailed as a masterpiece) is sold to the comune of Bergamo. Deplis subsequently becomes embroiled in an international dispute over the artwork on his back. This is a short, but nicely amusing, tall tale.
Rating: ****
Elsewhere
Read the story online
Edward Dunning, an expert on alchemy, dismisses as nonsense a paper submitted by one Mr Karswell, then finds himself the apparent target of some strange and threatening goings-on. He discovers that a man named John Harrington, who gave a negative review to one of Karswell’s earlier works, died in mysterious circumstances several months afterwards; with the aid of Harrington’s brother, Dunning attempts to avoid the same fate.
This is one reason why I’m often unsure about judging older fiction: literary styles change over time, so, if a story doesn’t work for me, how much is it an intrinsic issue with the piece, and how much just that it doesn’t chime with my aesthetic sensibilities? I’m wondering that after reading ‘Casting the Runes’, as I didn’t find James’s matter-of-fact reportage style all that effective in creating an atmosphere. Whether that’s simply because I’m used to reading supernatural fiction written in a more contemporary style, I’m not sure.
Rating: ***
Elsewhere
A PDF version of the story
Time for a new story-by-story review, and one that looks set to take me right outside my comfort zone. I bought the two-volume Oxford Library of Classic English Short Stories on a whim last year after seeing it in a second-hand bookshop, as one of my periodic nudges to myself that I ought to read more old fiction. So, now I’m going to read it.
The bibliographic information reveals that the Oxford Library was originally published as four volumes between 1939 and 1976, under the title English Short Stories of Today; this edition is therefore a pair of omnibuses. I’m limiting myself to the first volume for now, partly to see how it goes, and partly because there’s that much more distance between the stories’ original publication and their being anthologised in these books, which gives more weight to the term ‘classic’.
And now, the table of contents:
M.R. James, ‘Casting the Runes’
Saki, ‘The Background’
H.G. Wells, ‘The Door in the Wall’
John Galsworthy, ‘Spindleberries’
Leonard Merrick, ‘The Judgement of Paris’
Geoffrey Moss, ‘Defeat’
Richard Hughes, ‘A Night at a Cottage’
Dorothy L. Sayers, ‘The Dragon’s Head’
Naomi Mitchison, ‘The Hostages’
Frank O’Connor, ‘The Majesty of the Law’
Stella Benson, ‘On the Contrary’
W. Somerset Maugham, ‘Jane’
Hugh Walpole, ‘Mr Oddy’
Dylan Thomas, ‘A Visit to Grandpa’s’
Walter de la Mare, ‘Seaton’s Aunt’
Elizabeth Bowen, ‘Ivy Gripped the Steps’
Frank O’Connor, ‘Peasants’
W. Somerset Maugham, ‘Episode’
Evelyn Waugh, ‘Mr Loveday’s Little Outing’
Angus Wilson, ‘Realpolitik‘
Joyce Cary, ‘Umaru’
William Sansom, ‘The Girl on the Bus’
L.P. Hartley, ‘The Killing Bottle’
Graham Greene, ‘When Greek Meets Greek’
Joyce Cary, ‘A Good Investment’
V.S. Pritchett, ‘The Aristocrat’
V.S. Pritchett, ‘The Scapegoat’
I’ve read very little by some of those writers, and nothing at all by most of them, but even I know enough to observe that they’re not all English (judging by the blurb, ‘English’ appears in this context to mean ‘written in English’). I’m more concerned with the quality, though, as I’d expect nothing but greatness from an anthology that calls its stories ‘classic’. And there is, of course, only one way to find out about that — so, it’s time to get reading.
EDIT, 24th March: And now I’ve finished. I have a concluding post here.
Towards the end of last year, I decided to look through some publishers’ catalogues, and make a note of any 2011 books that sounded interesting. I found more than I could have any hope of reading, so I’ve decided to introduce a regular feature where I highlight some books from the coming month that have caught my eye. Here, then, are my notable books for January:
Paul Bailey, Chapman’s Odyssey
A novel viewed from a hospital bed, where the protagonist lies as the voices of characters from literature and his life speak to him.
Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall
A collection of six stories on the theme of memory. Sounds nicely wide-ranging.
Faïza Guène, Bar Balto
I’ve not read Guène before, but I understand that her work has been both acclaimed and successful internationally. This, her third novel, is a murder mystery told in multiple voices.
Ida Hattemer-Higgins, The History of History
This looks to have an intriguing combination of elements: an amnesiac woman trying to regain her memories, the history of Berlin, and a vein of fantastication.
Simon Lelic, The Facility
Last year’s Rupture was a fine debut, and this sounds an interesting follow-up, as Lelic writes of a near future in which laws have been tightened in the name of security.
Cornelius Medvei, Caroline: A Mystery
Of all the 2011 books I’ve learnt about so far, this may be the one that sounds the most fun — a story of a man who falls for a donkey.
Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air
Technically a 2010 book, but, as its UK publication date was so close to the end of the year (30th December), and I didn’t actually realise, I’m going to include it here. It’s the story of a young Ethiopian-American retracing his parents’ journey, with (so I gather) a mixing of stories that sounds particularly interesting.
Sunjeev Sahota, Ours Are the Streets
I’ve heard good things about this debut, which examines what drives a young man from Sheffield to become a suicide bomber.
Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy
Apparently it draws on Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, which I’ve not read; but the idea of this tale about a woman travelling to New York to investigate the life of her friend’s missing cousin still intrigues me.
David Vann, Caribou Island
One of the most anticipated books of the whole year, as far as I’m concerned, never mind January. Legend of a Suicide was one of the best books I read in 2009, enough to make anything else that Vann writes essential reading. Simple as that.
There are some changes underway at a couple of the blogs I visit regularly, which I’m going to mention here.
Niall Harrison recently stepped down as editor of the BSFA’s journal, Vector, and became editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons — so now he’s changing blogs. Niall is handing the reins of Torque Control over to his successor, Shana Worthen (and Vector‘s reviews editor, Martin Lewis), and beginning to post at the Strange Horizons blog. Good luck to all, and I look forward to seeing how both blogs develop.
Elsewhere on the internet, Scott Pack has started a project to read and blog about a different short story on every day of 2011. That should yield some good recommendations. Check out Me and My Short Stories to see what Scott has read so far.
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