Tag: short fiction

A trio of shorts

23rd December 2010 / / 3 Comments

Mark Valentine, ‘A Revelation of Cormorants’ (2010)
R.B. Russell, ‘The Beautiful Room’ (2010)
Gary McMahon, ‘What They Hear in the Dark’ (2011)

A triple-decker of single-story chapbooks, today: the latest two from Nicholas Royle’s Nightjar Press, and the launch title from Simon Marshall-Jones’s Spectral Press.

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The first of our new Nightjar titles is ‘A Revelation of Cormorants’ by Mark Valentine. It’s not long since last I read a story one of his stories, and, when I did, I was very impressed with Valentine’s control of voice; the same quality impressed me again on reading this piece. William Utter is a writer who has rented a cottage on the Galloway coast to work on a book about the lore of birds. Today, he heads out intro the bay to see some cormorants, and it’s an open question whether inspiration or the tide will strike first. Valentine builds Utter’s mental world very well, with imagery largely built around birds and books, and a slightly dusty mode of expression. He also creates a strong atmosphere in the story; and yet… I think something about the whole isn’t quite satisfactory. I can appreciate intellectually what the ending is doing, but I find that it doesn’t have the deeper emotional impact which would lift the piece to the next level.

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Birds appear again, though in a rather different context, in Nightjar’s other new chapbook. R.B. Russell‘s ‘The Beautiful Room’ is the tale of Maria and John, a couple looking for a house in a foreign country to where John is moving for work. As we join them, they’re looking around a place in the countryside, with which Maria has fallen in love, thanks to one room in particular; John is much less keen, and would prefer to live in the city. Their initial argument over this reveals deeper tensions in their relationship: Maria has sacrificed her work to make this move possible, and resents John’s not putting her wishes first in the house choice. Russell depicts these rising tensions elegantly, and they carry over into the second half of the story, when the couple investigate a mysterious scrabbling sound coming from behind the walls. The unexpected final moment comes as a beautiful image of release.

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Coincidentally, there’s a couple with a new house and a relationship under strain in Spectral Press’s first title, ‘What They Hear in the Dark’ by Gary McMahon. Rob and Becky are renovating a house whilst still coming to terms with the death of their son Eddie, and find a strange room which, according to the plans, shouldn’t be there. They call it the Quiet Room, because it seems to absorb all sound.

There is, of course, something mysterious about the Quiet Room, but McMahon’s ultimate focus is less that than the characters of Rob  and Becky. What impresses me most about the story is what’s going on beneath the words and imagery, the way that the Quiet Room comes to embody the couple’s different responses to Eddie’s death — for Becky, the silence is comforting, as she feels it brings her closer to Eddie; for Rob, the Quiet Room is a place of fear, caused by his search for a deeper explanation for his son’s death than the one Becky has accepted. These conflicting views come to reflect the wider tensions in the couple’s relationship, making for a nice balance between character and atmosphere. McMahon’s story is a good start for Spectral Press; I’ll be keeping an eye on what they do in the future.

BBC National Short Story Award: Conclusion

21st December 2010 / / 1 Comment

So, that’s the entire shortlist blogged. The first thing to say is that the judges put together a very good list; certainly I wouldn’t begrudge any of the five stories their place. David Constantine was the winner, but, for me, it would come down to a choice between the stories by Aminatta Forna and Jon McGregor. And, much as I appreciate the subtlety of McGregor’s psychological portrait, I think the elegance and economy of Forna’s telling gives her story the edge.

Helen Oyeyemi, ‘My Daughter the Racist’ (2010)

21st December 2010 / / 5 Comments

At the start of this story, the protagonist’s eight-year-old daughter announces that, from now on, she is going to be racist — against soldiers, that is, their country being occupied by foreign troops. The woman lost her husband in a bombing, and now lives with his mother in her village, where she is the object of unwanted advances from a villager named Bilal. One day, her daughter stands up to a group of soldiers, which so impresses one that he starts to visit. But the woman’s attempts to come to some sort of mutual understanding with the soldier are misinterpreted by the village as lustful intentions.

The sense I gain of Oyeyemi’s protagonist is of a woman feeling the pressure of expectation from many sides — her daughter, her husband’s mother, Bilal, the villagers — and trying her best to steer a course through it all. I like the complexity of the picture that Oyeyemi paints: the villagers have their flaws; the soldier is neither a stereotype of badness nor a stereotype of badness-suddenly-turned-good; the daughter changes her opinion of the soldiers in the fluid way that young children can. The woman is ultimately forced into a situation she doesn’t really want to be in, try though she may to make light of it. All is delineated well by Oyeyemi, and it makes me look forward to her story collection next year with anticipation.

EDIT: I’m not sure where I got the impression that Oyeyemi would be releasing a story collection in 2011, but she won’t be doing so after all.

ANOTHER EDIT, JUNE 2011: Perhaps I wasn’t entirely wrong to begin with; see my review of Mr Fox.

Jon McGregor, ‘If It Keeps On Raining’ (2010)

21st December 2010 / / 5 Comments

This is perhaps the most transporting story on the shortlist, in that (I think) it takes us the most thoroughly into the mind of its protagonist, which is quite an unsettling place to be. McGregor’s protagonist is a man who lives on his own in a little riverside house, and does nothing much more than watch the fisherman on the opposite bank and the boats that sometimes go past, and work on his raft and treehouse, the latter being his preparations for the unceasing rain and torrential floods that he believes are coming.

McGregor sketches in the history of this man very subtly. Reading between the lines, we discover that he was a police officer at the Hillsborough  disaster, who subsequently left the force because of the psychological trauma, and no longer lives with his wife and children. He dwells on the disaster still:

If it’s been raining a lot…[debris] gets swept along like small children in a crowd, like what happens in a football match if there are too many people in not enough space and something happens to make everyone rush, if they all start to run and then no one person can stop or avoid it, they all move together…

This almost stream-of-consciousness style of delivery gives a sense of intense preoccupation with whatever the man is thinking about at the time, be it past, present, or future; but there’s also a sense of inertia at times — he thinks about what accidents might befall the people out there on the boats, but can’t really see himself doing anything to help if one occurred.

This sense extends to the coming floods: on the one hand, the protagonist has asked the anonymous narrator to tell us these important things; on the other, he imagines that no one will listen, and he’ll only save himself, and his children if he sees them. The parallel McGregor makes between the rains and Hillsborough is effective (our man couldn’t stop a flood of people, but perhaps he can make up for it with how he handles a flood of water);  and the whole story a superb portrait of a man deeply scarred by the past, holding on to some hope for the future.

Sarah Hall, ‘Butcher’s Perfume’ (2010)

20th December 2010 / / 5 Comments

A nicely observed chronicle of the friendship between two Cumbrian girls: Kathleen, the narrator; and Manda, the tough daughter of the notorious Slessor family I love the way that Hall captures details in this story, such as the almost osmosis-like fashion in which friendships can develop at school. In one lesson, the two girls scribble on each other’s exercise books, then Manda ‘borrows’ a pen from Kathleen, all without a word being spoken. And then:

Something was granted to us afterwards. We were past simply knowing the name of the other and what form we were in. We were allowed to say Hiya in passing, in front of other friends, at the gates of the school, or in Castletown going down to the chippy or the arcade.

The Slessors themselves are portrayed as a family apart from the rest of the community, both physically (with their big house built on the profits of industry, a house  that ‘had no business being built in Cumbria’) and socially (they have the reputation of coming from wilder, harder stock than most — ‘the ones that lit the beacons when other folk hid in cellars and down wells’); an incident involving a horse at the end of the story shows how mysterious the family, and the codes by which they operate, remain to Kathleen.

There’s also a strong sense of place in ‘Butcher’s Perfume’; the Cumbria portrayed here is rather like the Slessors in its harshness. All in all, Hall’s is a very atmospheric piece.

Aminatta Forna, ‘Haywards Heath’ (2010)

20th December 2010 / / 2 Comments

Years (at least thirty, at a guess) after graduating, Attila is a successful doctor with an international reputation. During a spell in London as a visiting consultant, he hears the name of Rosie, an old flame he hasn’t seen since his university days. Discovering that she has taken early retirement, Attila decides to look Rosie up; but, on arriving at her old hometown of Haywards Heath, he finds that the woman he knew has been taken by early-onset dementia.

Only two stories into the shortlist, and already I disagree with the judges. Forna leaves the events of her plot to speak for themselves, and I find the clean understatement of her telling more affecting than Constantine’s denser treatment of his theme. In addition to the portrait of Attila’s witnessing what has happened to Rosie, there’s the elegance of having Haywards Heath represent both Attila’s success (the town’s name was always difficult for Rosie’s overseas friends to pronounce, but now Attila says it perfectly) and Rosie’s decline (any success she had in her career has gone with the arrival of her illness, and she has returned home). In all, this is a very nicely realised piece.

David Constantine, ‘Tea at the Midland’ (2010)

20th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

The shortest of the Award nominees and not, to be honest, one that says ‘award-winner’ to me on its own terms; it’s good, yes, but it doesn’t knock my socks off. A couple take afternoon tea at a seaside hotel; she has brought him to admire a frieze there; he can’t appreciate it, because he refuses to separate the artwork from the criminal actions of the artist. Simmering beneath this immediate argument is a wider difference in worldview, exemplified in the text by the lengthy, discursive passages associated with the woman (such as the opening, when she admires the graceful movements of surfers out at sea), and the man’s terser dialogue. Constantine’s story is an effective and economical portrait of the central couple’s relationship; but it strikes me as good rather than excellent.

The BBC National Short Story Award 2010

20th December 2010 / / 4 Comments

Tomorrow is National Short Story Day; to mark the occasion, I’m blogging the shortlist of this year’s BBC National Short Story Award – namely, these stories:

David Constantine, ‘Tea at the Midland’
Aminatta  Forna, ‘Haywards Heath’
Sarah Hall, ‘Butcher’s Perfume’
Jon McGregor, ‘If It Keeps On Raining’
Helen Oyeyemi, ‘My Daughter the Racist’

The above titles will turn into links as I make my way down the list.

What I won’t be doing, however, is trying to predict the winner, because that was announced at the end of last month. David Constantine’s story was declared the winner; as it’s first on the list, I’ll be interested to see what standard it sets for the rest.

EDIT, 21st Dec: I’ve now written a concluding post in which I pick my winner.

Further links
Podcasts of the shortlisted stories
The Award at BBC Radio 4
The Award at Theshortstory.org.uk
Booktrust, which administers the Award
Comma Press, publishers of the anthology

Tim Nickels, ‘Supermarine’ (2010)

14th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

The longest and last story in Null Immortalis (and therefore the last story in all of Nemonymous) takes us to wartime Gibraltar, focusing on a number of characters, but most notably Kay Keating, an ex-film starlet who has travelled to the Rock on the orders of — well, that’s for the story to tell, not me. As with ‘The Green Dog’, I feel I haven’t been able truly to get to grips with this piece. I loved the flow and atmosphere of Nickels’ writing, but couldn’t piece together the deeper connections in the story.

Rating: ***½

Bob Lock, ‘Haven’t You Ever Wondered?’ (2010)

9th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

There have been stories in Null Immortalis which draw on their context of being in this particular anthology, but none more so than Lock’s contribution. Anthology editor D.F. Lewis is himself the protagonist, approached by the alien Tullis in a tale that casts the entire project of the Nemonymous series in a rather different light. This story comes across as a big in-joke, but, to be fair, I did find it rather amusing.

Rating: ***

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