Reviews of the Ephemeral

Archive for the ‘Short Stories’ Category

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‘All the Bananas I’ve Never Eaten’ by Tony Williams

In Saboteur Awards, Short Stories on May 19, 2013 at 3:20 pm

-Reviewed by Charlotte Barnes-

All the Bananas I've Never Eaten

Over recent years there seem to have been fluctuations in the popularity of the short story as a genre. However, over recent months, the genre has certainly been on the rise; proving so popular with readers that we are now encountering the younger sibling of the short story, flash fiction, much more frequently than before. All The Bananas I’ve Never Eaten, the latest release from writer Tony Williams, offers a fine example of why this rise in popularity is happening.

The collection is marketed as a short story collection, although I would perhaps argue that some of these snippets rest better beneath the umbrella of flash fiction given their length. Irrespective of their genre, the stories in All The Bananas I’ve Never Eaten are fascinating insights into the average, sometimes not so average, lives of people.

While I would love to address each story within the collection, given that there are over seventy, it is a perhaps a little too adventurous for this particular review.

It becomes clear from the opening story, ‘Clicks’, that this collection is written from a truly unique perspective, or perhaps I should say perspectives. A personal favourite from the collection is ‘Anya’s Complaint’, a truly intimate and emotional story with a hard-hitting ending that I wasn’t prepared for. ‘As God Intended’ is another forceful story within the book, detailing the suspicions of both a father and son. While the ending is simple, it certainly has an unexpected emotional impact on you when you read the closing dialogue.

A story that stood apart from the rest was ‘The Wonderful Thing’; the title lulled me into a false sense of security from the beginning and, from the first sentence, Williams began to pull the rug from beneath me. The tale is such a painful and honest depiction of a real-life situation, which is undoubtedly something that a lot of readers either have lived or, unfortunately, will live, through. A truly touching addition to the collection.

The likes of ‘Back in Jiffy’ and ‘Call of Duty’ certainly provide welcome breaks from the emotion by littering small fragments of humour in between the more serious tales. ‘Learning to love Mr Lamb’, a later story, also provides a breath from all the emotion with the rather uplifting story of a man who finds himself in charge of a butcher’s shop simply because the butcher shares his name. ‘Laptops’, another humorous interlude, is yet another personal favourite within the collection, demonstrating modern-day flirting as its finest.

‘Markingitis’ is yet another memorable tale, with an amusing beginning that in no way prepares you for the end; something that Williams seems to be remarkably good at, in All the Bananas I’ve Never Eaten at least.

While only a few stories have been mentioned from All the Bananas I’ve Never Eaten, let it not be assumed that the others were not worth mentioning. Each tale within this collection is brilliant in its own right, with many of them being stories I would willingly and pleasurably return to re-read in the future. Tony Williams has successfully used the medium of literature to weave in and out of the life of the average person, re-creating those lives for our reading pleasure. The emotion, humour and awkwardness in these tales is the closest thing to real-life I have read in an extremely long time and I would certainly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good book that will keep you on your toes.

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‘Fog And Other Stories’ by Laury A. Egan

In Saboteur Awards, Short Stories on May 13, 2013 at 10:00 am

-Reviewed by Rebecca Burns-

Fog Laury A Egan

Fog and Other Stories, a collection of stories by Laury A. Egan, is set mostly in the American Deep South, and Egan is adept at capturing the heat and luxuriant language of that area. The dialogue between characters zips along nicely and is perfectly believable; one can almost imagine the slow, relaxed drawl as characters share murderous intentions. Yes, this indeed is a collection where death and killing features heavily. Wives bury their husbands in barns, cops shoot teenagers, an eighth-grade serial killer selects a victim. However, while Egan allows her characters to vocalise their fears and desires in a plausible way, other elements of the collection are clunky and less seamless.

The first story in the collection, ‘Jango’, starts well. The sultriness and oppressive weather is nicely observed: “For several days, clouds had thrust against each other, promising wind and lightning, but each evening the weather forgot what it was threatening to do and slipped into night, carrying over the expectation of storms to the coming dawn”. Jango is taken on as a gardener for an isolated widow but it is clear she has a secret. It would have been more satisfying to the reader had they been allowed to uncover this secret without the obvious signposts; unfortunately, here, and in other stories, Egan is less accomplished in the passages where she is required to move the plot forward. For example, photographs of Audrey’s dead husband are dotted around the house but are slightly askew; Jango wonders if she kept them like that, “implying something wasn’t straight about her dead husband?” Later, as Jango and Audrey share a romantic meal, the conversation becomes uncomfortable: “Jango didn’t like to talk about the war or his mother, so he reached over and topped up Audrey’s glass and his own [...].” Such explanatory passages are awkward and jarring, not as smoothly effective as Egan’s skilled representation of the landscape.

It is a pity, because Egan is convincing in her portrayal of the protagonists’ perspective, with all their thoughts and prejudices. ‘The Man Who Wandered In’ is a touching story about a man suffering from dementia and a daughter regretting lost opportunities for familial tenderness. However, the daughter’s back-story is again heavy-handed: ‘Allyson sighed and took a long gulp of scotch. She had been drinking too much lately, but the stress of her job was terrible, her love life was nonexistent, and her finances were in chaos due to some unwise decisions she’d made on several investments. And then there was the loss of her father’. Too much. These passages remove the satisfaction the reader finds in drawing these conclusions for themselves.

Unfortunately certain parts of the title story of the collection, ‘Fog’, read in a similar way. The protagonist returns to Ireland, though she is not sure why. Her backstory is too explanatory, but Egan does well in her representation of a loving, bickering – albeit ghostly – family unit.

There were stories in this collection that I very much enjoyed – ‘Tiki Bar’, for example, is a clever, humourous feminist daydream – and Egan is a writer blessed with the ability to write effective dialogue. If she can sharpen up the plot and characterisation elements of her narrative, her next collection could really sing.

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‘My Mother Was An Upright Piano’ by Tania Hershman

In Saboteur Awards, Short Stories on April 26, 2013 at 2:30 pm

-Reviewed by Martin Macaulay-

Tania Hershman’s My Mother was an Upright Piano compacts 56 stories into 136 pages. Her short-short stories and micro-fictions are concise, impressively constructed examples of the form; stories with soul despite their brevity. Hershman’s writing is cross-discipline, eschewing a specialist streak that in lesser hands might have resulted in sets of navel-gazing motifs or a hermetically sealed collection. Instead she plunders from science and the arts, creating dense philosophical microcosms that have more to say about the human condition than the attempts of some lengthier works.

My Mother Was An Upright Piano Tania Hershman

Each sentence is stripped back; their words scraped or polished until the paragraphs are whittled into shape. These are sculpted fictions that fizz with intelligence. They spark ideas in the reader that linger afterwards, like ball lightning coring into your mind.

I was hooked before the book had even properly begun, sucked into the introductory note on the font that is used – Crimson Text – and its backstory. The opener, ‘The Google 250′ is a modern take on personal gratification as technology supplants sex to satisfy our base desires. Google fuels ego, and the narcissistic need to look at what others say is interwoven into everyday life, ultimately to replace sexual satisfaction.

People were having dreams about browser pages that had words missing, their names had wings and had taken flight, like heads off a goldfish.

It’s a tight story, playful, but the premise isn’t too outrageous. This tale is more cautionary than comical.

Hershman writes with a lyrical precision that slices apart what it is to be human. In ‘My Uncle’s Son’ a young man regards life from the periphery until someone reaches out to drag him into the living. ‘Under the Tree’ is one of the longer pieces at over three pages. A mother worries as her son has begun to sit under a tree all day, distant and withdrawn. She longs for his deceased father to be alive again, to help her understand. Her desperation is palpable:

Help me, I say at night, lying in the lonely bed, the marriage bed of not-John and me. Where are you?

Mother and son are reunited but what lies ahead is left hanging. Is this merely a temporary reunification? Has the mother pulled the son over, or is it vice versa? Open to interpretation, there is no doubting the intensity of emotion packed into this short.

‘The Prologue’ is a wonderful piece, barely a page in size. In a role reversal, here the prologue is the story, the novel itself succinctly wrapped in a few sentences in the final paragraph. ‘Missy’ is a mere paragraph but shows us the devastating impact that nurture can have on fucking up future generations. A would-be mother transfers the undermining statements and vicious words onto a would-be daughter, unable to blunt the phrases that cut her deep, open wounds that have failed to heal:

If I had a daughter, this is how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she’d be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful

My Mother was an Upright Piano is more than the sum of its parts. The book is structured into seven groups of six and two groups of seven, bonding this collection together as tightly as a chemical compound. It’s a solid, unbreakable and inspiring collection. Hershman creates worlds with depth and heart. She shows us lives soaked in loss; some with glimpses of hope, others dystopian. Reading My Mother… is a bit like discovering a boxful of unfamiliar photographs in a curiosity shop. You study each picture, try to decipher the look on the subject’s face, or work out what that object is in the foreground. Hershman pulls you in to these beautifully condensed fictions. The difficulty is in trying to climb back out again.

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‘The Flood’ by Superbard (George Lewkowicz)

In Interactive Literature, Saboteur Awards, Short Stories on April 21, 2013 at 1:57 pm

-Reviewed by Ian Chung-

What is particularly interesting about The Flood is how it translates the live storytelling experience into a digitally portable medium. For instance, the first story ‘Dr Who and the Water’ was performed by Superbard (aka George Lewkowicz) at the Birkbeck Writer’s Hub October Hubbub last year, and he plans to continue performing stories from The Flood around the UK. At the moment, the ebook features three stories by Superbard and illustrations by Maria Forrester, accompanied by music and narration from the former. The latest update in iBooks added music and narration for the third story, ‘The Ark’, plus a burst of social commentary in the form of new song, ‘Two by Two’.
The Flood - Superbard
A complaint that is sometimes levelled at digital storytelling is that it resorts to gimmickry, privileging the manipulation of form at the expense of good stories. Thankfully, there is no danger of that in The Flood. Opening story ‘Dr Who and the Water’ nicely sets up the arrival of the titular flood. Rather than spend time trying to explain why the flood has happened, the story self-assuredly brings the reader into a remoulded reality where London is ‘Venice with no buildings’, and everyone is still unconcernedly going about their business, including watching the Doctor’s onscreen triumph. (I would quibble with the story’s referencing a particular Doctor Who episode though, since that so precisely dates the story’s time setting.)

‘Brixton’s Afloat’ is my favourite story of the three, due in no small part to its catchy refrain (vocals by Nikki Blemings):

Now that Brixton’s afloat will you lay your body next to mine,
And we’ll sink to the bottom of the sea.
For now my darling we should smother ourselves in brine,
Now that Brixton’s afloat upon the sea.

The story itself is told in a familiar form, making use of diary entries, but even the tiniest detail like how the narrator begins each entry by describing what kind of tie he wore that day (the tie is later dropped in favour of jeans, then waterproof trousers, and finally a wetsuit, as the flood progresses) lends a twist, especially when one is experiencing the story aurally.

As for final story (for now) ‘The Ark’, it manages to evoke a blend of pathos and disgust simply from the device of having the characters sit down to play a game of bridge. The addition of song ‘Two by Two’ just before the story emphasises the class aspect of the card game choice, but there is also something pitiful about a group of people (illustrated as animals though, which is apt on multiple symbolic levels), the ‘worst of humanity’, carrying on as if they were not stuck in a sinking ark. Superbard also displays his gift for live storytelling in the story’s closing line: ‘and then for the first time, they started to breathe’.

Frankly, if The Flood were to just finish on that note, I would consider it a satisfying book. Fortunately, The Flood is an ongoing project, and readers are invited to contact Superbard on Facebook or Twitter to suggest storylines or characters. With any luck, you might even be made a character in the stories, with your choices determining Superbard’s handling of your character, turning The Flood into a form of collaborative storytelling. (The credits for the current three stories connect the various characters to their real-world inspirations.) On the whole, this is a project that makes for great reading-cum-listening, and my only regret is that I cannot be in the UK to catch Superbard performing one of these stories live.

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‘This Jealous Earth’ by Scott Dominic Carpenter

In Short Stories on February 8, 2013 at 1:05 pm

-Reviewed by Ian Chung-

This Jealous Earth is Scott Dominic Carpenter’s first collection of short stories, and it is also the first title to launch for MG Press, the publishing arm of Midwestern Gothic. Both literary journal and micro-press share the same core values of ‘shining a spotlight on Midwest authors by focusing on works that showcase all aspects of life—good, bad, or ugly’. Carpenter’s collection also stays true to this in the variety of characters that it showcases, all of whom are united by what he refers to as ‘the question of choice: in each story characters arrive at a fork in the road, and they need to choose a path that will alter their future in important ways’.

This Jealous Earth by Scott Dominic Carpenter

The book opens with ‘The Tender Knife’, a story underpinned by the tension between youth and age, pragmatism and sentimentality. At his young wife’s insistence, Walter is steeling himself to cull the population of his koi pond. What should be an ordinary affair becomes complicated by his guilt at having to kill a bunch of fish ‘built to outlive him’: ‘What bothered him more than the killing was the parting, the leave-taking. Harder to sever than flesh were all those other filaments, the invisible ties that bound him like live nerves to those he loved.’ When Walter’s decision at the end of the story is to once again avoid the problem, having gone through one traumatic almost-botched koi beheading, it is hard not to sympathise with his wish to just be with his grandchildren, ‘escaping, however briefly, from this warm land with its bubbling ponds and its lies of eternal summer’.

As for title story ‘This Jealous Earth’, it serves up an interesting variation on the usual ‘end times’ narrative by presenting events from the perspective of Catherine, a young girl who refuses to let her blaspheming, unbelieving older brother be left behind, even at the cost of her place among the supposed elect. Midway through the story, there is a moment where Catherine keeps stuffing more and more items into her dress pocket, thinking to herself, ‘Her pocket felt heavy now. It weighed her down. This jealous earth didn’t want to let her go.’ Rather than taking the easy option of turning his story into a straightforward critique of the Driscoll family’s cultic beliefs, Carpenter instead uses the ending to demonstrate that in extremis, the bond of family may prove to be the strongest force of all, and it is really we who do not want to let each other go.

Alongside these short stories, Carpenter’s collection also mixes in a couple of flash fictions. Pieces like ‘Foundering’ and ‘The Phrasebook’ succinctly portray relationships in various states of crisis. The former contains this heartbreaking evocation of empty nest syndrome: ‘Even the children, it turned out, were only on long-term loan, and the departure of each cardboard box felt like another melon ball scooped ever closer to the rind.’ The latter matter-of-factly relates: ‘Something went wrong. The turns were too sharp. We were going too fast. We thought it was all under control. By the time we understood, it was too late. The collision was too violent. The damage had been done. Only the formalities remained, the paperwork.’ After this paragraph of relatively short sentences, the final ‘Please, I need to report an accident’ forms a sobering coda to the whole flash fiction.

It is a testament to the consistency of Carpenter’s narrative skill that I could have picked any story in This Jealous Earth and found something about it to recommend in this review. As it is, there is not enough space to say much about the surreally funny ‘Sincerely Yours’, beyond that as a one-time student dealing with utility bills, I completely empathise with the protagonist’s predicament. Or ‘The Death Button’, which despite its title, turns out to be a rather morbidly sweet love story. Or ‘General Relativity’, a story made all the more effective by its refusal to explain its fantastical element, in which the narrator experiences whatever he reads. So This Jealous Earth is packed full of surprising tales, and best of all, if like me, you read it and really enjoy Carpenter’s writing, you can look forward to his debut novel, Theory of Remainders, coming out later this year from Winter Goose Publishing.

[You can read Ian's full interview with Scott Dominic Carpenter here]

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Interview with Scott Dominic Carpenter (This Jealous Earth)

In Interview, Short Stories on February 7, 2013 at 1:26 pm

-Scott Dominic-Carpenter spoke to Ian Chung-

Scott Dominic Carpenter teaches literature and critical theory at Carleton College (MN), where he has written extensively on the representation of madness in the novel, political allegory, and literary hoaxes. His fiction has appeared in such journals as Chamber Four, Ducts, Midwestern Gothic, The MacGuffin, Prime Number and Spilling Ink. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a semi-finalist for the MVP competition at New Rivers Press, he has just released his first collection of short stories, This Jealous Earth (MG Press). His debut novel, Theory of Remainders is due to appear in May (Winter Goose Publishing). His website is at http://www.sdcarpenter.com.

1) How did your collaboration with MG Press come about? How does it feel for This Jealous Earth to be their first title?

It was a happy coincidence. MG Press is the brainchild of a literary journal called Midwestern Gothic. They’d been putting out excellent issues for the past few years, and one of my stories had appeared in their pages. Just as I was ironing out the last wrinkles in my collection, they put out their initial call for book submissions. I think they expected to be publishing a novel, but I managed to win them over with the stories—and I couldn’t be happier about it. MG Press is a class operation, and they provided more support (both in editing and promotion) than you’d get from presses many times larger.

Midwestern Gothic Press

2) What holds the stories in This Jealous Earth together as a collection? Are there any writers that have influenced either particular stories or you as a writer in general?

It’s quite a varied collection, featuring main characters of all backgrounds—men and women, old and young. No setting appears twice, and readers will find the gamut of emotions. However, the stories are bound together by the question of choice: in each story characters arrive at a fork in the road, and they need to choose a path that will alter their future in important ways. I try to show these choices in real time, and then illustrate the consequences.

Stylistically I find myself drawing on many authors, and much depends on who I’m currently reading. But special favourites are Paul Auster, David Mitchell, Arthur Phillips. I also love the short story greats of the nineteenth-century: Poe, Hoffmann, Gogol, Balzac.

3) In 2011, The Millions published an essay by Cathy Day, in which she argued that talk of the renaissance of the short story is reflective of the rise of creative writing classes/workshops and their preference for the standalone story or poem, rather than any actual shift in what people want to read. As someone with both a published collection of short stories and a forthcoming novel, what are your thoughts on this?

It’s an interesting theory, and there may be a grain of truth to it. The fact is that public taste shapes what people write at the same time that what we write shapes public taste. There’s give and take. The short story used to be a tremendously popular genre, then it subsided, and now it seems to be coming back. Given how marked our preference is for shortness (on the web, for example), I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more interest in short stories. That said, I don’t think the novel is in any danger of being knocked off its champion’s pedestal.

Scott Dominic Carpenter_headshot copyright Paul Carpenter

4) On your website, you note that you ‘came to creative writing rather late’. As someone whose academic background is in nineteenth-century French literature, what eventually led you to creative writing, and how has the journey shaped you as a writer?

In some ways, it’s the most natural of transitions: you spend twenty-odd years studying literature, and that gives you the tools you need to start writing it. It’s certainly true that reading is the best preparation for writing; I may just have pushed that formula a little farther than most. What’s been interesting to me is how my creative writing still revolves around the preoccupations I developed in my reading: the difficulty of expression, the search for transcendence, humour. I find myself drawing on my analytical background quite often, though in indirect ways.

5) What’s next for you? Could you say something about Theory of Remainders, your forthcoming novel with Winter Goose Publishing, and how it compares with This Jealous Earth?

As you say, the next thing up is the novel. Theory of Remainders is a wonderfully exciting project (they’re already trying to hawk the movie rights), and we’ve just finished the galleys. (It comes out in May.) Theory… is a literary novel with a well-honed edge of suspense. It deals with an American psychiatrist, Philip Adler, who seeks to resolve a trauma he suffered — the death of his daughter — over a decade earlier. Most of the story takes place in France, where Adler lived for several years, and it weaves together notions of insanity, language, and cultural difference in a tale that is both moving and touched with humour.

At the same time, I have other pots simmering on the stove: more stories, some travel writing, and another novel.

[ED: We'll publish Ian's review of Scott's collection, This Jealous Earth very soon, so keep an eye out for it...]

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‘The Syllabus of Errors’ by Ashley Stokes

In anthology, Short Stories on January 12, 2013 at 1:26 pm

-Reviewed by Elinor Walpole-

Described as ‘Twelve stories of obsession, loss and getting in a state’ Ashley Stokes’s The Syllabus of Errors is a collection of unnerving tales about people struggling to cope with their disappointments. Having read Stokes’s ‘The Swan King’ in the process of reviewing Unthology #2 for Sabotage in 2011 and found it an intriguing and melancholy read, I was keen to see if The Syllabus of Errors followed in this trend. Stokes doesn’t disappoint with these stories and each, like ‘The Swan King’, challenges you to read between the lines though you can’t help but rush forwards as the momentum pulls you towards the climax of the story.

The Syllabus of Errors, Ashley Stokes, published by Unthank Books

As well as the themes mentioned above, the stories are linked by an almost academic fascination with language, naming and categorising. The Syllabus of Errors even introduces a couple of playful new terms, used by different characters in a few stories, such as the unforgettable adjective ‘shoutybollocks’, presumably referring to an obnoxious and overbearing individual. Teachers and intellectuals also form the main source matter for the material – from students given to over-analysis to self-deprecating teachers who are thwarted in their desires by those they resent as intellectually inferior.

Despite the humour however all the stories have a dark, disturbing edge, epitomised in the first story of the collection. ‘Island Gardens’ serves as a statement of intent for The Syllabus of Errors with its delicate balance of paranoia, insecurity, disappointment, wry humour and unnerving tension. Unfortunately for the protagonist, and for all the characters in the collection, it seems that though their hopes may never be realised, their fears almost certainly will be, however self-deprecatingly the protagonist may try to foresee this eventuality.

In ‘Island Gardens’ our narrator, mild-mannered English teacher Grant Woods, is waiting for his maybe-girlfriend ‘V’ in the centre of a London that he barely recognises. Killing time and to stave off nerves he ponders how homogenised his surroundings have become since his last time in London, which has been newly populated by what he calls ‘Adverts’ and ‘Loomparettes’- young people wearing gaudy labels or excess tanning lotion.

‘V liked these words as well. She said she enjoyed learning all of the silly names
he gave to things and people’.

As Grant indulges in nostalgic musings, he creates wry character sketches of the surrounding people, and an ill-judged hesitation while fantasising about the back-stories of a couple indulging in public displays of affection turns the situation from a daydream tinged with anxiety into a tense and inexplicable manhunt.

Grant has been experiencing ‘ahnen’, the ‘sensation that something is wrong without knowledge of its cause’ throughout his wait, but he is in denial that the threat he faces isn’t the disappointment in love that he fears, but rather that of senseless, unprovoked violence that he refused to give credence to from the surrounding people.

‘You well bate, blood,’ said the boy, separating his fingers and stabbing his thumb upwards.
‘Pardon?’ Said Grant. As he stood up it crossed his mind that back in Alex’s unforgiving pool hall world this one’s opening shot would have been a ‘Reverse English’.

Grant and his antagonist, the ‘Reverse English’, are lost in translation, and Grant inadvertently escalates the situation by refusing to be threatened by someone he still considers an extension of his daydream – safely labelled and given a fantasy history, thus neutralised. But he has misjudged the ‘Reverse English’ entirely and Grant’s refusal to be drawn further into confrontation has consequences.

‘Abyssinia’ follows in this trend of intelligent, lovelorn academics trapped in a dialogue that wrongfoots them. ‘Abyssinia’ opens with Mellis, a disgraced lecturer, waking up in hospital in urine-stained trousers and piecing together the events that have landed him there while preparing for his final act of defiance. A more visceral tale than ‘Island Gardens’, ‘Abyssinia’ plumbs the physical as well as emotional humiliation of its protagonist and extends the character sketches to farcical levels.

Mellis’s character weaves a dystopian narrative that flits back and forth in a framework of aspirations and hopes frustrated by bureaucracy, coloured by the fog of alcohol abuse and its requisite humiliating half-memories. Facing up to the events that have led to his most recent rampage he recalls a significant stand-off between himself and his HR manager, who is pioneering a new era for their institution (earning him comparisons with Mussolini) and who is also his love rival:

‘Now, you know why we’ve called this meeting, because we spoke last year about your redeployment…’
career ending […]
‘…and we did ask you to supply us with your CV so that we can assess what you can do for us…’
what else you can rob from me

As well as sharing the analysis of language, its meaning and interpretation that is in ‘Island Gardens’ (and there are a few moments where the protagonist mentions certain ‘types’ as well for good measure) ‘Abyssinia’ is also another tale reprimanding the protagonist for daring to dream of romance, a theme that unites all the stories in this collection. All the tales are:

‘embroiled in the oldest and most mysterious story of all. A boy strikes out, following some girl or light or icon or whispered promise, and whatever he does, whatever he finds, whatever he overcomes, whatever the frontiers he crosses, he never comes back’.

Overall The Syllabus of Errors is a tense, exciting and thought-provoking series of stories from the point of view of the alienated or underdog, encompassing humorous experiments in form such as ‘A Short Story about a Short Film’ and full of references to the return of the repressed and the major wars of the twentieth century – especially World War II and its Nazis, Fascists and Communists. There is also sharp criticism of the current state of society – the ‘types’ that Stokes’s characters see all around them are obnoxious, self-interested and materialistic, and many of the stories are set against a backdrop of recession and its effect on the arts and society, with all its accompanying ill-advised and compromising stop-gap measures.

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The Portable Museum (Ox and Pigeon)

In online magazine, Short Stories on December 13, 2012 at 12:53 pm

-Reviewed by Martin Macaulay-

The Portable Museum is a literary journal curated by Ox and Pigeon, a digital publisher keen to use the electronic format to share stories in translation from around the world. Four short stories furnish the first edition, each originally published in Spanish from Latin America or Europe. This makes for a compact and fairly rapid read, but the texts included here have real depth and reward the reader with each return visit.

The Portable Museum 1, Ox and Pigeon, reviewed by Martin Macaulay for Sabotage Reviews
Fabio Morábito’s ‘The Mothers’ is a dazzling beginning to the collection. A dream-like retelling of a rite of passage that twists the archetypal mother, at least for the period of June, into a savage seeking refuge up trees and hiding on balconies. During this month they are wild and naked as they feverishly hunt their prey: ‘an office worker, a manual labourer’. The mothers descend from their hideouts at dusk to rest in doorways, allowing their children to nurture them, clean their wounds and feed them. The cared-for temporarily become the carers. The role of the mother is displaced and they are portrayed as creatures both feral and uncontrollable. Yet throughout, they retain the silent respect of society as this ritual passes. Originally published in 1989, ‘The Mothers’ is a compelling fable worthy of (re)discovery.

By contrast, ‘Nazi Girl’ by Álvaro Bisama first appeared in 2010, but is a fine complement to the opening short story. This is a tale of a girl brought up by Nazi fetishist parents as she enters adulthood, set against the background of the Pinochet regime in Chile. At face value it is a tale of a girl, struggling to fit in, who latches on to the fanatical element instilled into her by her parents. Dabbling with Nietzschean philosophy, she asserts her own world view, proudly able to set herself apart from her classmates. As she matures, BDSM and Nazi role-playing take a stronger hold, but the distinction between consensually-inflicted pain and the suffering of fellow countrymen and women is brought sharply into focus. Despite glimpses of black humour – ”Soon everyone forgot about my reputation as a Nazi” – the inescapable brutal reality of the past is never too far away.

In ‘The Japanese Garden’ by Antonio Ortuño, Jacobo seeks to find a lost companionship of a different sort. As a child, his father hired a girl, Fabiana, to keep him company and spend the night with him. When his father passes away his guardian uncle decides that this irregular practice should end too. After a while Fabiana moves out of the neighbourhood and Jacobo loses all contact. Despite the passing years, he can’t stop thinking about her. When his father’s estate passes to him he decides to find out what became of Fabiana. ‘The Japanese Garden’ raises some interesting points around the currency of friendship, and the relationship between artifice and happiness.

Finally, this small collection closes with Enrique Vila-Matas’ ‘Loves That Last a Lifetime’. Ana María is a high school teacher who lives with her grandmother. She is trying to deliver bad news to her grandmother; the story revealed to us through Ana María’s inner and external dialogue. A thread of unrequited passion pulls the characters together, but ultimately it’s the weight of history and lasting impact of colonialism that tears at individual responsibility.

Each short has much to offer. One story may share a theme with another – fascism, family, unreciprocated love – but the thing that cuts across them all is the calibre of writing. Disappointingly it features an all-male cast, but this does not detract from the final product. If The Portable Museum is to thrive in this digital age, with ever-increasing traffic and monetary devaluation of artistic endeavour, it needs to position itself apart from the others. The voices of literary magazines and journals can get drowned out, lost within the electronic chatter and noise. Fortunately, this journal speaks loudly and with a clarity that should allow it to be heard above many others. For only a couple of quid, you get four outstanding stories. The second issue is due in the first quarter of 2013 and I’m looking forward to its arrival already.

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Unthology #3

In anthology, Novella, Short Stories on October 16, 2012 at 11:30 am

-Reviewed by Charlotte Barnes-

Unthology 3

Unthology 3, the third short story anthology to be released in this series by Unthank Books, is kicked into gear with an introduction that claims, “In these uncertain, frightening and recessionary times… it’s only natural to want to switch off the daily terror and hide in a warm fantasy.” The statement immediately lulled my mind into believing that what may be on offer in this new collection was warm fantasy, though that statement also concludes with ‘there is some sex in it’, so it seems the anthology offers something for a wide scope of readers.

There was however a slight pang of confusion upon reading the opening story, ‘Terra Cotta’ by David Rose; the narrative, which weaves readers through a maze of artistic creations as we find ourselves on the tour of a gallery, is not only original and complex, but also maximises the opportunity to explore the visual side of literature through vivid, convincing and all-round inspired descriptions. Having said that, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat underwhelmed by the overall premise of the story, particularly after I had prepared myself for something much more fantasy-based. ‘So Long Mariane’, by Sandra Jensen, completely redeemed this initial reaction, and explained that this was much more than a collection of fantasy tales, with a relevant tale that begins with, “When Mariane asked me to help her kill herself, I thought it would be relatively easy.” The first person narrative provides a gut-wrenching insight of the perspective of someone playing party to euthanasia. Jensen’s narrative, with infrequent and unmarked speech, revolves mainly around the accomplice and the emotional effects, allowing a truly unique voice to become apparent through the inspired tale.

At a later stage in the collection you will discover ‘Even Meat Fill’ by Gordon Collins. My initial reading of this story left me feeling a little underwhelmed and admittedly, slightly confused. However, after returning for a second reading, I eventually found myself bowled over by not simply the story but the narrative used to articulate it. The introductory paragraph to the piece is repeated throughout, which either accidentally or deliberately, perfectly complements the repetition that can be noted in the action the paragraph itself depicts. The story, through the use of this significant paragraph and the repetitive actions that are addressed, succeeds in telling a tale while clearly capturing the monotony of every day life and, I suppose, every day work. This is followed by ‘The Triptych Papers’ by Ian Chung, which is definitely a personal favourite from the whole collection. The story is broken down into parts, allowing for different narrative voices to be exploited and ultimately collaborate towards an eerie, perhaps even science fiction style piece. Similarly, ‘Before the Song’ also benefits from shifts in narrative allowing for the perspective of each member of a family to be voiced throughout.

‘Paradise’ by Sharon Zink and ‘Trans-Neptune’ by Ashley Stokes, which I will refer to as the relationship stories of the collection, cater to the promise of sex offered during the introduction. ‘Trans-Neptune’, which is significantly longer than other stories in the collection, presents a fairly normal situation (a woman, under-nurtured by her husband, contemplates finding sexual attention elsewhere) however still manages to offer something special through the complicated narrative voice that, despite toying with the idea of infidelity, seems to offer readers something familiar that they may even relate to.

‘A Publisher Surveys the Changing Literary Scene’, by CD Rose, caused a definite smirk for me, as a committed book reader. The detective tone of the piece truly throws you off track whilst addressing regular elements of the publishing industry in a unique and inevitably amusing manner. Skipping ahead again leads to ‘The Theory of Circles’ by Debz Hobbs-Wyatt which is a truly fascinating story executed through the use of a unique, modern and inspired narrative style. The story is told through a series of prose-written paragraphs, Facebook updates, Twitter updates and blog posts which keeps the reader continuously guessing about the next twist of the narrative style. The use of repetition in language contributes to this further by  expanding on the circular idea that suggests itself in the title and lingers throughout the body of the text.

Another clever manipulation of literary techniques is embedded within ‘My Oldest and Dearest Friend’ by Charles Wilkinson; the story seems to follow an unexpected avenue which involves two major characters being calmly murdered by their partners, however the shock is quickly snatched away by the reality that they are all in fact uncomfortably devouring dinner together at the close of the story. An equally fascinating style is presented in the final story ‘Eleanor: The End Notes’ by David Rose, in which the narrator guides us through a tragic love story, which on its own probably offers nothing particularly unusual; however it is an experience heightened greatly by the tendency to directly address the reader through asides such as “(you know the passage, I’m sure)” which inevitably draws in a reader, making the story much more intense and involving.

The collection unquestionably offered a welcome break and did indeed usher me into a world of warm fantasies, although some authors achieve this much more effectively than others. While some contributors to this collection opted to explore a world of fantastic, original and sometimes unbelievable ideas, others, such as Sarah Evans in ‘Terms and Conditions’, addressed real life issues in a touching way, without dressing it up with an overly complicated narrative and such like, which certainly isn’t a criticism. The entire publication was a welcome escape from reality, or in some cases a look at reality through new eyes, and I sincerely hope that there will be a fourth addition to this series in the future.

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‘Goldfish Tears’ by Curtis Ackie

In Short Stories on August 30, 2012 at 11:51 am

-Reviewed by Nick Sweeney-

Goldfish Tears by Curtis Ackie
Arguably, one approach to the short story is to take ordinary people and show extraordinary events happening to them – after all, we don’t want to read stories of ordinary people doing ordinary things. In Curtis Ackie’s Goldfish Tears, nearly all of the characters are extraordinary to start with, ensuring that his tales start with a high interest factor and go on from there. It’s a good technique.

Many of Ackie’s characters are afflicted in some way. The everyday fears and paranoias that people harbour under the surface are brought to the fore of their lives, and given an external force that can be resisted, but, often, not overcome. If this sounds as if Ackie has a fatalistic approach to the trials of existence, it may be true. And yet there is an overall cheerfulness in his writing that mostly lifts what would otherwise be rather downbeat stories.

Karin, the character in the opening tale, ‘Ordeal by Water’, is fixed to her armchair by an unknown force, as water rises around her. Her thoughts range from the dramatic – she may be immobilised against her will – to the mundane – a worry that the water will stain the walls, but at least this shows the optimistic belief that she will survive the ordeal. Her thoughts are assaulted by older fears, of the dark, of spiders, of school bullies, and she also focuses on both tender and damaging moments with an ex. The author gives these pointers to pinpoint the internal damage. We aren’t told where the water comes from, and, if you buy into Ackie’s creations, it doesn’t matter. You could decide it’s a metaphor for tears, but, again, it doesn’t matter: the stories demand that you accept the here and now of them.

I hesitate to use the words ‘magic realism’ to describe these stories. I think ‘absurdist’ is a better term. Both need to be done well to avoid looking like parody. Ackie is mostly successful in this, though I think some of the scenes in the last story, ‘Carnival Evening’, go a little too far in depicting people acting out everyday expressions: instead of dancing, a dancer cuts a rug with scissors, while a drinker, rather than drink, pours his beer onto a whistle to wet it – you get the idea; it’s absurd and funny, but makes a small point about language rather than serving the story. Luckily, the story is strong enough to carry itself, that of another ostensibly powerless woman assaulted in her own home by outside forces; the assaults in this case may come from dreams, but – again, if you accept the writer’s scheme – have a more immediate, frightening reality.

Both ‘The Bath of Mary’ and ‘Birthmark Like a Scar’ deal with attitudes to disability. The latter is a rant, a bigot’s efforts to get others to share his distaste for disabled people. It may have the people of the former Yugoslavia in its sights (the writer lives in Zagreb, Croatia) but you could substitute the birthmark for almost any attribute and see the story as a comment on prejudice. It works as a story because of the imagery, the language, and the latent sense of comeback on the narrator: ”Whatever I was doing the collection of collapsed angles that made up her face would pop up to spook me.” ‘The Bath of Mary’ looks at disability from a different angle: Henrietta prevails upon her wacky scientist husband to invent something to reverse her disability – the science is highly questionable, which I love. Again, you just go with it if the story’s done well. Ackie is, in some small way, trying to address disabled people’s views of their own disabilities.

Many of the stories here can partly be summed up by some lines from the opening of ‘Undone’:

The uncertainty of my whereabouts wouldn’t bother me half as much if I knew who I was. What I find most distressing is this vague sense that something is wrong, and for that to be true everything must at one point have been quite the opposite.

This is another tale featuring the inability to move, and to talk, and revealing a formless, irresistible antagonist. It then takes shape as a recognisable monster, who finally leaves the narrator alone; it seems that his lingering ‘sense that something is wrong’ is an even worse fate.

Another signifier of internal damage is personified in Sragnàc, the protagonist in ‘Shadowplay’, who wonders if it is ”at all normal for (hallucinations) to occur spontaneously in the sane”. Sragnàc’s independently-minded shadow seeks to embarrass him socially and at work – though Sragnàc is too vain and self-sufficient ever to be truly embarrassed – in a tale full of literary and cultural references. He finally faces the choice of whether to keep fighting it or to give in to it. Is the shadow supposed to be his conscience? Possibly, and that can serve as a satisfying answer, but, as in most of the other tales here, the literal answer is irrelevant.

My favourite story was ‘Oh, Blue Hag’. Egon admires his twin sister Eugenie so much that he seeks to become her, using invasive, conscience-free dishonesty and subterfuge. It is a story that goes beyond the ostensibly comic to the tragedy of his longing, his self-hatred and his selfishness. A wish-fulfilment fantasy, as in ‘The Bath of Mary’, the story seems to reach a conclusion that both satisfied me as a reader and still leaves me wondering what else might happen.

Curtis Ackie tells modern fairy tales, messing with our ordinary perceptions and knowledge to do so. Most of the stories are illustrated expertly by Lorena Matić in a style that wouldn’t be out of place in a children’s book; while not absolutely essential in a book of short stories, they add to the unreal atmosphere of what is a very assured and entertaining collection of stories.

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