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Posts Tagged ‘Saboteur Awards’

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Saboteur Awards 2013: Fiction

In Saboteur Awards on June 5, 2013 at 11:10 am

-In which Richard T. Watson sums up the Fiction side of the Saboteur 2013 Awards-

A Sabotuer rosette, from @jsamlarose's Twitter

A Sabotuer rosette, from @jsamlarose’s Twitter

The first of the Fiction stable’s awards was for the Best Short Story Collection by a single author. Four out of five nominees were traditionally-printed books, while one (Superbard’s The Flood) was designed specifically for the iPad and featured a range of interactive multimedia elements. Our voters listed its advantages as: ‘Imagination, lyricism and originality – merging classic storytelling and classic stories with a modern, nerdy scientist twist and a wicked sense of humour.’ and ‘Because it’s simply brilliant, adored the story telling and the little sea shanty, singer had a great voice. Loved it and want more please.’

The titles alone in this category deserve some awards. From The Syllabus of Errors by Ashley Stokes to Tania Hershman’s My Mother was an Upright Piano and the winner, All the Bananas I’ve Never Eaten by Tony Williams, all were quirky but somehow appropriate. Meanwhile, Fog and Other Stories featured (as described by anonymous voters) a ‘Fascinating collection of stories and images of “fog” in all its forms. Ms. Egan has a great way of expressing the personalities of the characters’ in a collection that is ‘metaphorically alluring and humanistic’.

Our voters thought Syllabus deserved to win because ‘[Stokes is] a proper, bastard, full bore writer. These are stories that are true to themselves whilst showing a wide, deep range of influence and level of expressive dexterity. They’re an antidote to all the lame, colourless half formed stories[...]

Voter comments for My Mother… focused on the originality of Hershman’s writing, her ‘stunning prose’, ‘fresh, new voice’ and her stories as ‘little nuggets of solid gold, always witty, wise and warm’, with one saying: ‘Flash fiction can never get better than this. Tania is an exceptionally talented writer – someone to watch out for.’

But the winner was Tony Williams, for some of the following reasons:
‘Because the stories are rich with surprises and they are silly and clever and fun and disturbing. They take you in unexpected directions and you want to go on reading – that’s why it should win.’
‘Tony Williams is really an extremely cool dude. As well as being a super original and funny writer he’s also a really engaging performer. I’m really excited his short fiction’s being published… and by Salt, too!’

saboteur awards - short story collection

The nominees for our Best Magazine Award ranged from the long-running Rising, to the very new, like Lummox and the Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Art, or Alliterati with its focus on young writers, via last year’s Saboteur Award winners Armchair/Shotgun, with their third issue. All of them feature a range of short fiction, poetry and often visual artwork, sometimes with non-fiction in the form of interviews or reviews.

Lummox and Lakeview both had their first issues nominated, with voter comments highlighting Lummox’s quality of entries. Lakeview, the category’s runner-up, was described as ‘A diverse blend of traditional and experimental arts. Beautifully illustrated. Excellent work by new and established writers.’ and our review indicated it had promise to go on to even better things, echoing the anonymous comment that Lakeview was ‘A breath of fresh air, no clichés and obvious choices. Here to stay.’

The tenth issue of Alliterati was described as ‘A beautiful magazine created by passionate people, with pretty much no funding. Shows a true passion for the arts’ and praised for bringing ‘art and creative writing together in an innovative way and inspires people across the globe! A great use of the new digital marketplace!’ Comments also stressed the varied nature of the magazine’s content and readership.

The follow-up to last year’s winner, Armchair/Shotgun #2, was the third edition of the Brooklyn-based magazine, described as having ‘A continued dedication to both a fantastic product and the kind of writing that makes you feel publishing isn’t dead.’ Other praise declared: ‘They have a strong vision, strong writing and art, and their interview feature is especially strong.’

Maybe longevity gave the edge to winner (by just four votes), Rising, with many voter comments stressing a consistency and a willingness to take risks. One longer comment runs: ‘Rising has always unfailingly supported new and emerging writers alongside more established ones. Rising is brave and doesn’t shy away from bold subject matter or experimental forms. Every issue feels new, not just on the pulse, but Rising feels as if it were the pulse itself.’

Best Magazine Rising

Our category for Best Fiction Anthology catered for multiple-authored collections of short fiction, sometimes organised around a theme by an editor or publisher, but always representing the best of a wide range of submissions.

We had the world’s first ‘post-experimental’ collection from Bartleby Snopes, Post-Experimentalism, with its stated aim of providing literary satisfaction while transcending storytelling genres. Voters emphasised its innovation, with one saying: ‘Not only is this an innovative and entertaining anthology, but Post-Experimentalism seeks to bring forth a new movement in the literary world.’

The Dalkey Archive anthology, Best European Fiction 2013, is the latest in an annual series by the American publisher, showcasing what they consider to be the best foreign-language fiction in English translation. Voters called it diverse, refreshing and an ‘incredibly important anthology of fiction in translation, refreshing the staid Anglo scene. High production values (as ever) from Dalkey, bringing a diversity of voices and styles that expand the mind and bookshelf.’

The young, Scarborough-based Valley Press put forward an anthology featuring young writers under the age of twenty-five writing about their take on modern society. Front Lines was praised for the vitality of its young writers, with our own review expressing relief that the short story was in good hands with a new generation. One voter commented that: ‘The quality of work in both the writing and the editing in Front Lines by Valley Press is testament to how well small publishers can do in this new age of publishing.’

The category’s runner-up was Unthology #3, the third anthology from Unthank Books, and the third to be well-received by a Sabotage reviewer. Voters praised the variety and experimental nature of stories, as well as the overall quality and cohesiveness of the anthology as a whole. One described it as: ‘A variety of fresh new British writing talent is given vital oxygen by this consistently high quality volume’. Another said ‘the third collection picks up where the second left off and goes further still. Wonderful and eclectic. Can’t wait for the fourth.’

The theme for the winner was clear. Overheard: Stories to Read Aloud falls very much within the oral/aural storytelling mould, with stories deliberately designed for reading out loud – whether in the reader’s head or literally out loud – and short enough to appear in front of an audience without them getting restless. Editor Jonathan Taylor’s introduction places the collection in a tradition stretching back at least as far as Dickens’ public performances of his novels, and probably as far as primitive camp fire storytellers. Voters commented on the range and breadth of stories and of writers, as well as the collection’s more-ish nature. One said: ‘This collection deserves to win because, quite simply, the quality of the writing is very high throughout, as opposed to in part, which is so often the case with fiction anthologies. Credit must go to Salt Publishing. They have quickly become synonymous with unearthing new talent and this collection builds on that reputation.’

Best Fiction Anthology: Overheard

The Best Novella category also featured a young field, including Sally Ashton, Luke Kennard, Alan Cunningham, Jason Rolfe and Django Wylie.

Sally Ashton’s Controller told the story of a young English woman paying her way as an artistic life model in Spain. It never shies away from the visceral, and is a graphic tale of eroticism and exploitation. One voter said: ‘This is one of the most unique and disturbing stories I have read in a very long time. Clever, erotic, and disturbing.’

Django Wylie’s The Middle strikes a chord with disappointed commuters everywhere, with our reviewer calling it a ‘stunning novella, sometimes heartbreaking, but always funny’. One voter said: ‘Such wonderful language and and an extremely enjoyable read. Left me wanting more!’, with another calling it a ‘great intelligent piece of writing’.

Runner-up Alan Cunningham’s Count from Zero to One Hundred is an intimate exploration of the life of a disabled male narrator, praised by voters for its honesty and insight. Its autobiographical feel extends to memoir-like passages and almost travel-writing sections as the narrator encounters the cities of London, Dublin, Budapest and Berlin. One voter said ‘The subject matter is at times painfully honest and the writing style captivating and entertaining’, and another that the novella was ‘thought-provoking and poetic. Something truly special which stays with you’.

In his first foray into prose writing, Holophin, Luke Kennard creates a believable sci-fi future-world where nations have been superseded by corporations and everyone carries a personal, semi-autonomous computer behind their ear. Voters praised the originality, wit and humour of Holophin. One voter described it thus: ‘It’s a small but terrifying satire, an ingenious idea, with all kinds of philosophical consequence, and it rips along joyfully and oddly, with some brilliant handbrake turns (the Proppian folktale for god’s sake!). It’s just ingenious, cleverly playful and masterfully unsung about itself.’

Both the runner-up and the winner were published by Penned in the Margins, who went on to collect the award for Most Innovative Publisher. Unthank Books were also nominated in three different categories.

Best Novella Holophin

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‘The Middle’ by Django Wylie

In Novella, Saboteur Awards on May 29, 2013 at 10:10 am

-Reviewed by Nick Sweeney-

The Middle is a short, powerful book about journeys, both actual and metaphorical, through hope and failure, but ultimately towards the suggestion, at least, of some kind of redemption. The characters, a boy – actually in his late teens – a man who feels the breath of middle age on his neck, and an old man facing his last journey, are un-named, but never simple ciphers; they are recognisably and uncomfortably real, and may well be looking out of a mirror at you at various times in your life.

The Middle Django Wylie

The boy is on the London Tube on the way to Heathrow. We witness his surveillance of the types around him with their cheap clothes, electronic gizmos and air of failure and disappointment. I like the timelessness of his gaze and passing conclusions, that Holden Caulfield-like contempt of the world of phonies, the notion that youth knows best. The boy contemplates his possible futures:

The choice was stark, and the outcomes bleak: drop out and probably end up in the Argos stock room, or keep trudging on for the entitlement to spend eight hours a day in an artificially-lit office.

The writing is superb, with some great metaphors: the Tube as a ‘living Rubik’s cube’, the ‘wandering nihilism of late adolescence’, a ‘pint-sized Terry Waite – a Terry Lightweight’, and this gem:

He’d once heard some motivational speaker on the radio who’d been going on about how opportunity was always knocking. The problem was, the boy thought, so are salesmen and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He couldn’t help but
wish it used the bell.

Despite its resigned tone, its consideration of failure and suicide put off partly because he has to get his farewell note to hit exactly the right spot, the boy’s narrative is a celebration of youth. With all its flaws, youth still doesn’t hold the terrors of ageing.

The empty pointlessness in politics, culture, academia and student life falls under his pitiless gaze, but he never loses sight of where he is going, and you get the impression that he gets taken along with it all somewhat helplessly but, importantly, with the spark of indignation in knowing that he goes unwillingly. He refers to God as ‘our dear creator’, and notes the self-serving nature of ‘a god that would change water into wine to inebriate some broads at a wedding but ignore the cries of those on board United 93, or suffering Mamma Mia the Musical’.

Stuff like this makes it one of the funniest books I’ve read on the modern condition.

Like any sensitive, misunderstood young man, the boy wants to write, and he has a refreshingly honest take on it:

All he wanted was the chance to call himself a writer to girls in the pub (it sounded better than unemployed), and to possibly see his name, or that of his ridiculous nom de plume, in bookshops.

Those who people the boy’s journey distract him from his thoughts, but they prompt new ones too. These people – painted unforgettably in a few lines – serve a catalytic purpose in the narrative. Were they to be without this purpose, then they might just have appeared to be the butt of what might seem cheap jokes – I like them anyway, I should say – but they put the finishing touches to each thought, and start the next.

The boy’s aim of getting to Paris may only be a dream. It may also be better left as one. His journey reminds me of an episode in J K Huysman’s Against Nature, when his hero Des Esseintes starts for London but then, surrounded by English travellers in the waiting room at the Gare du Nord, realises that he has got the essence of it.

In part two,‘the man’ is at the airport. He starts off thinking about his regrets, not writing a novel – like the boy – and not making it with the band he was once in. Time has stolen everything from him, he reflects, ‘like Lehman Bros’, has delivered him away from his dreams into the clutches of wife, children and mortgage.

Unlike the boy, the man seems to have reached the stage at which he will get on a plane. Like the boy, he makes a fantasy out of his New York trip, all the while the reality of it – a dull business meeting – in the corner of his mind.

He ponders one of the many crises of capitalism, and his place in it:

Providence had given him everything, and yet everything was not enough. In fact, nothing was ever enough. Having more things created more opportunities for it all to malfunction… the man couldn’t help but think he had been the compliant architect in the construction of his own suffocating prison.

The man’s story has the most melancholic turn to it. The cheerfulness is missing from the humour, and, more chillingly, hope is also absent. We can believe the boy when he dreams, can accept that he may well turn his life into something. The man has lost that optimism. Like the boy, he has escape in mind, and sees himself ‘disappearing; reinventing himself’, but we can’t take this as a serious proposition at any time.

‘The old man’ is also fixed on travel in part three, though we can assume that this journey is probably going to be his last:

It would be a stretch to say that the old man couldn’t wait for the final throes of his earthly existence, but he wasn’t particularly enamoured with the idea of
hanging around too long. Hospital life was inane and dull – it was just like real life.

Doctors are sinister and vulpine, and the old man’s fellow-patients are sheeplike, content to waste their final hours in watching daytime TV. However, my main impression of this part was that the old man had regained the comic, but also generous, eye of the boy in this sequence, which could be depressing, but isn’t.

The old man is another who regrets the not-done. There is yet another unwritten book here – but at least it got a little further than those of the man and the boy. He also thinks of ‘unimpregnated woman’ and, a comic note of chill, the people he didn’t kill in a spree.

Django Wylie has given us a stunning novella, sometimes heartbreaking, but always funny. ‘Start over’, the last page exhorts us (before we go on to a playlist of music I don’t feel qualified to comment on – though I will be investigating it) and I wanted to, and I will.

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‘Adventures in Form’ ed. by Tom Chivers

In anthology, Saboteur Awards on May 29, 2013 at 8:30 am

-Reviewed by Lucy Ayrton-

Adventures-in-Form

Adventures in Form is a beautifully curated anthology of contemporary poets engaging strongly with form in their work. The poems are clustered under 15 areas (Code is Poetry, Traditional Revised and Correspondence, to name three), each reflecting an approach to exploring form.

The introduction to the book (by Tom Chivers) was a joy to read. Chivers is clear and passionate about his subject matter, and this felt like one of the most coherent and tightly curated anthologies I’ve seen.

“Form is not something to be ignored as irrelevant and old fashioned or, conversely, defended at all costs against the barbarians of free verse. In any vital literary culture, form must be subject to repeated renewal.” Tom Chivers

The strength of the collection was its diversity. It was nice to be challenged as well as have a selection of poems that I’d have chosen to read anyway, and I took something from each of the authors. Some of the poems, however, were exceptional.

‘Note’ by Hannah Jane Walker was a beautiful, narratively driven piece of surrealism with a precision of detail that shoves the poem off the page and into your face (“I see her sometimes sock-shuffle in and stand in front of the DVDs./ I saw her pick off pieces of your Thorntons easter chick and melt/ hold them on her tongue.”) The use of occasional grammatical inaccuracies contributes to a kind of disjointed, broken feeling – like this correspondence is more about disconnections than communication.

This is the kind of book that makes you interrupt your happily telly-watching boyfriend and ask him if he knows what a Univocalist poem is (“Frosty mongs bosh shots of scotch/ on London’s Brook Common,/ rock-off to soppy mono toss;/ lost songs of London:/ Town of Bop.” – ‘Two Moons for Mongs’, Ross Sutherland).

Some of the poems I just flat out didn’t “get” (‘Eating Chinese Food in a Straw Bale House, Snowmass, Colorado, January 2011′ by Paul Muldoon was just a string of letters, repeating and slowly changing. I guess if you read them aloud it sounds like an eating noise. But is that it? Is that the whole point? Surely I’m missing something? Gah!) and some felt like exercises rather than finished pieces. Much like improv, I suspect some were more fun to write than they are to read. The form N+7 (“a translation process in which each noun in the original text is replaced by the seventh noun after it in the dictionary”) in particular, struck me as more of a starting point than a poem. Having said that, Ross Sutherland’s ‘The Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-Ha’ (actually an N+27 poem) felt much more carefully constructed than the form implied. Also, what’s wrong with providing starting points? If read as a “some cool things you might like to try if you’re a bit blocked” compendium, Adventures in Form is no less satisfying than when read as an anthology.

The ideas are delightful to skim through, even without the poem. A poemixtape (where one word must link each song title to the next), a quantum poem (words written on sheep, their juxtapositions left to chance) and The Analogue Guide to Parenting (Chris McCabe wrote down 12 inane things they said to their toddler. The toddler chose the order by pointing at a toy clock) were particularly delicious concepts.

Adventures in Form is a wonderful book. Like a literary equivalent of a pinterest board, it makes you want to have a go at creating your own versions of the poem as much as to stare and coo over them. I’m not sure I’ve done it justice, but trust me. Properly exciting in a way that anthologies can rarely sustain, Adventures in Form should be the next poetry book you buy.

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‘Second Lives: Tales From Two Cities’ (ed. Rodge Glass & Jane Bernstein)

In anthology, Saboteur Awards on May 28, 2013 at 9:20 pm

-Reviewed by Charlotte Barnes-

I approached Second Lives: Tales From Two Cities with apprehension, given that I was somewhat unprepared for what the anthology would contain. It markets itself as a collection of views provided by various writers in order to portray individual perceptions on the once-industrial cities of Glasgow and Pittsburgh. The anthology combines various examples of art, with some writers expressing themselves through the medium of short stories, some opting for a harsher and more accurate non-fiction approach and some even refusing to use words, choosing to portray their city through images that they have either taken or created themselves.

Second Lives Cargo Press

The basic purpose of the book wasn’t apparent to me initially, perhaps because I do not usually delve into this sort of literature. However, upon reading the introduction, which is a transcript of a conversation that occurred between the editors, Jane Bernstein and Rodge Glass, I found myself immediately pulled into the anthology.

As we flit between cities, beginning with Allan Wilson’s perspective of Glasgow, the true essence of these places soon becomes filtered through the writing and, ultimately, your reading of the texts. Wilson’s ‘Remember when this was a farm?’ is a particularly emotive story, with clear references to the developments in Glasgow that were slowly appearing where simple land used to be. Despite the emotional torment that seems apparent in the protagonist Jamieson, there still seems to be a final tone of optimism within the tale.

Lori Jakiela contributes a number of memorable poems to the anthology, offering her insight into Pittsburgh, before Kapka Kassabova plummets us back into the artistic depths of Glasgow, delivering another heart-warming example of short fiction.

Pittsburgh writer Gerry Stern delivers another interesting view into the city through his assessment that he has, ‘a love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh’. In detailing what he adores and despises about the city, it feels that we have taken another step closer to understanding the fundamentals of this land that so many artists appear to be enamoured of. Stern’s poetic musings are followed by Mitch Miller, writing for Glasgow, who proceeds to divulge details about his ‘dialectograms’ – while I won’t make a mockery of this art by attempting to explain it in my own layman terms, I will say that it’s a truly unique art form that is yet another contributing factor to what makes this collection so special.

One piece in particular that I enjoyed was ‘Dear Mr Billy Connolly’, written by Peter Mackie Burns; this short extract tells the tale of a pub in Glasgow that always has a Billy Connelly CD playing in the toilets. For me, this particular piece is a wonderful example of the quirks that are hidden beneath both Glasgow and Pittsburgh and, after reading and enjoying this anthology, I would like to thank all the writers involved for awakening me to those quirks which, before now, I was ignorant of.

Charlotte Glynn’s recollection of her younger years in Pittsburgh, followed by her abandonment of and eventual return to the city, I found particularly moving – more so given the diagram she supplies on which she plots her growing love for the city. If nothing else, this collection will encourage you to firstly, appreciate the world around you that you have not yet explored; and secondly, it with surely ignite some curiosity for your own hometown and exactly how you feel about it.

The Pittsburgh and Glasgow writers had very different impacts on me during my reading: something that I particularly enjoyed during my reading of Glasgow’s tales was how artistic this city is, something that I was completely unaware of until my reading of this anthology. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, endowed me with a wonderful picture of a town that is full of different perspectives, all of the same thing; I particularly enjoyed the over-laps between tales in which different writers referred to the same thing but in an entirely different manner – it was eye-opening, to say the least.

Despite my initial mixed feelings for the anthology, I am pleased to say that I would now recommend Second Lives to anyone – including people like myself who would no doubt grumble the same, ‘I don’t read these books’, moan that I did. I thoroughly enjoyed delving in and out of these people’s lives and their cities, and I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to do so.

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‘Pressed By Unseen Feet’ (ed. Rose Drew & Alan Gillott)

In anthology, Saboteur Awards, Short Stories on May 27, 2013 at 3:54 pm

-Reviewed by Richard T. Watson-

Around ten per cent of York’s working population is employed in tourism, directly or indirectly, and more than a handful of those are employed in the city’s competitive ghost story industry. The historic centre is crammed with ghost tours, the spooks seeping through ancient cobblestone streets that have seen Romans, Vikings, Saxons and generations of people since. York is a city proud of its long history – last year celebrating the 800th anniversary of its city charter – and its streets, like the lawns of TS Eliot’s poem, have often been ‘pressed by unseen feet’.

Pressed By Unseen Feet

York-based Stairwell Books has put together an anthology of prose and poetry taking its title (Pressed By Unseen Feet: An Anthology of Ghostly Writing) from Eliot, and offering up a series of chilling stories and spooky poems from Yorkshire writers. They are stories from the stones of York, or occasionally ghosts from farther afield. These are mostly concerned with things seen out of the corner of your eye, or poetic landscapes haunted by a feeling of unease or even just a memory.

Over the centuries, we’ve understood ghosts to be many different things. Sometimes, the souls of the dead, caught between this world and the next, that haven’t managed to pass on, to Heaven or Hell, maybe because they have unfinished business with the living. Or they’re memories of the dead, of those we cared about who have gone forever but somehow remain. Or guides/guardians from a higher plane of existence, hanging around to help mere mortals get through the process of living. Occasionally, as in Pressed By Unseen Feet, they appear as figures from history, when the distant past bleeds into our modern times. Then sometimes they’re something else even harder to describe and explain.

For example, ‘Cavern’ by Pauline Quirk, has as its narrator the spirit of a cave – its conscious essence, if you like. Like many of the other entries in Pressed By Unseen Feet the story hints at a world beyond human or mortal comprehension, pointing to a consciousness that can’t be explained by rational thinking or science. The anthology as a whole urges the reader to push the boundaries of our understanding and open ourselves up to the possibilities of a world we can’t fully explain. It asks what’s so special about the rational world in the first place, and suggests we’re limited by mortal blinkers.

Jim Fairfoot’s ‘Existential Pizza’ is another entry that asks the reader to look at the world in another way – it’s about what it sounds like it’s about – calling into question the reliability of the traditional five senses and rationality. What evidence do you need that the pizza is, in fact, a pizza? Like much of Pressed…, this debunks rational thinking with something not quite explicable.

On the other side (of the coin, perhaps, but maybe a spookier ‘other side’), there are the entries that imply we live our lives surrounded by the memories and debris of former lives – our own, those of people we knew, or of our ancestors. A lot of the entries set outside of York, for example, focus on the memory of the stones or of buildings. John Coopey’s poem ‘The Ghost of White Hart Lane’ ties ghosts to the memory of a physical place, a sort of collective consciousness of a shared history – shared with other people and with a specific place. In this case, it’s a football stadium – and there’s an attendant sense of loss as Spurs get ready to move to a new ground – but it’s a feeling that applies in countless situations. Meanwhile John Gilham writes about Roman sandals and the ghostly shades in the mud of the Thames, in his poem ‘The Fish-Eyes of the Dead’. These are perhaps Pressed by Unseen Feet‘s more credible kinds of ghost story in an anthology that contains plenty of stories of the shiver-down-the-spine variety, and poems haunted by loss.

In a smart combination of the traditional ghost story with the more subtle ghost-as-memory story, Andrew Brown delivers one of his excellent and touching tales from a nursing home. In ‘The Return of Uncle Clarrie’, Clarrie’s retelling of childhood trauma – and a ghostly encounter – forces a turning point in his life, in which he himself has barely played any part for decades.

Despite its long and solemn history, its famous city walls and countless tales of the dead, York has its amusing quirks, and so does Pressed by Unseen Feet: ‘Game Over’ by Ed Cooke. It’s a funny, off-the-wall warning about the dangers of technology and human nature, with a very British take on nuclear apocalypse. It’s a little dark, yet perfectly pitched. But it’s not spooky, ghostly or creepy, nor does it have any obvious connection with York or Yorkshire. But it is brilliant, all the same.

That aside, Pressed by Unseen Feet succeeds in giving the reader a taste of the ghosts we often create for ourselves: half-remembered lives, departed loved ones, and the flicker in the peripheral vision that we can never quite place. It hints at those we’ve lost but not really lost, sitting beside us, with their lives (or some sort of life) still going on around us, only occasionally seen.

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‘Best European Fiction 2013′ (ed. Alexsander Hemon)

In anthology, Saboteur Awards on May 26, 2013 at 11:40 am

-Reviewed by Rebecca Burns-

I haven’t read much in the way of translated texts before so this was my first exposure to many of the writers featured in Best European Fiction 2013. And, as the editors of the anthology might hope, as too the individual writers, I was so struck by the quality of the work that I plan on reading more by the authors in the future.

Introducing European writers to a wider audience is the anthology’s ambition, as cheerfully alluded to in the Preface by John Banville and Introduction by Aleksander Hemon. Yet Hemon is not fixated upon sales, more the continued ‘flow of communication’ between writer and reader; Banville is keen to celebrate the ‘infinite undependability of words’, the endless negotiation between origin and meaning that emblemises the act of translation. The writers picked for this anthology range across every country in Europe and the quality of their prose is very high.

Best European Fiction 2013 Dalkey Archive

The opening story in the collection is a cracker. ‘Before The Breakup’ by Balla (Slovakia) is a powerful exposition of an overbearing, unspecified sense of threat. Miša, the central character, has ‘something’ growing behind her TV set. We never learn what this ‘something’ is, only that it is ‘moving sinister, slowly and inevitable’. We discover that a similar, unidentified thing appears in Miša’s friends’ apartments, driving them out, controlling their behaviour in so much as they pretend it isn’t there. Is this thing a representation of the interference of the state, alluded to by the link one character makes between the thing and ‘actually existing socialism’? Setting this interpretation aside, the story is a great precursor to a collection of European writing.

Similarly, ‘My Creator, My Creation’ by Tiina Raevaara (Finland), is riveting. It is a story told from the perspective of a female robot, designed to cater for her male creator’s needs. The reader is jammed into the robot’s consciousness from the shocking and very first line: ‘Sticks his finger into me and adjusts something, tok-tok, fiddles with some tiny part inside me and gets me moving better [...].’ Such a sentence is evocative of the transgressive control the creator has of the robot. She is programmed to conform to the traditional female role, being demure and friendly, and amenable to men. This is not, however, a straightforward story of suppressed outrage or a cry for emancipation. It is more complex than that; indeed, it is a touching love story. The robot strives to connect to her creator, beyond occasional moments of ‘stroking’. The narrative moves along in elliptical, jerky phrases, mirroring the robot’s attempts to understand her growing emotions and make sense of her existence. It is also incredibly sensual, for all the talk of metal and wires:

After that keeps me on later in the evenings, strokes me more slowly than before, maybe he wants to smooth my lumps and bumps, remove the dark oxides from my case, maybe he wants to make me gleam. When it is already far into the night—I have never been on so late in the night—he sighs, touches my innards, and switches me off.

Tiina Raevaara is a writer I want to read again.

The style of ‘Angels on the Inside’ by Dulce Maria Cardosa (Portugal) is different but no less moving. A young man recalls an incident from his childhood, which was essentially a moment when his brother was almost hit by a car. The story is written in an unobtrusive manner with the odd, heart-tugging phrase thrown in; the man and his brother were cherished as ‘our mom was proud of us, more than she was of anything else in life’. Cardosa’s straightforward style allows a sense of foreboding to develop, though the danger is not apparent until the very end of the tale. She is also adept at capturing the sense of being a child; tiny outrages and disappointments produce fleeting emotions as the boys ‘still felt everything in a provisional sort of way’. Lovely, lovely.

There are other gems: ‘Music in the Bone’ (Tomás Mac Símóin, Irish), about a man who is compelled to conduct an imaginary orchestra; ‘Migration’ (Ray French, Welsh), in which a son grieves for his father, suffering from dementia, whom we eventually learn has died; ‘When the Glasses are Lost’ (Žarko Kujundžiski, Macedonian), where characters are trapped in a lift and represent society in microcosm, with all its suspicions and distrust.

There are stories within this Best European Fiction collection that I will revisit again and again. The editor’s ambition – that the collection will encourage readers to pick up books by European writers new to them – has worked for me.

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Overheard: Stories To Read Aloud (ed. Jonathan Taylor)

In anthology, Saboteur Awards, Short Stories on May 21, 2013 at 3:00 pm

-Reviewed by Richard T. Watson-

The earliest stories were told through word-of-mouth, and passed on with slight variations by being told over and again to new generations. Imagine narrating to groups of rapt listeners, probably huddled round a fire in their cave, hoping the power of the spoken word can hold back the terrors of the night. These were tales to make sense of the world around early mankind, told simply and in a way that connects with something basic and primitive inside us. Salt’s anthology Overheard: Stories to Read Aloud aims to reconnect with that spoken heritage, and asks a scattering of modern writers to contribute their stories in the good old style.

Overheard Jonthan Taylor

That’s not to say that Overheard‘s stories are fairy tales or myths for the campfire. Nor are there Homeric epics or tales spread out over a thousand and one nights. But like our fireside storyteller, there’s an awareness of the ‘physical power of words’ (in the anthology that opens with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Power of Words) The focus is on clear, linear narratives, strong focal characters with a clear voice and stories short enough to read aloud to an audience without them getting restless.

Overheard offers a punchy read, with a lot of short, sharp stories from some writers who’re on top of their game. Some are snappy, bitesize, only a page or so, while others take some more chewing. But all of them draw the reader into a contained world, leave their mark, and then move on. And in case you missed the place of the anthology in the oral tradition, editor Jonathan Taylor has arranged the stories in sections with names like Crying Stories, Singing Stories and Whispering Stories.

There are sincere stories of family heartache and support (Sara-Mae Tuson‘s ‘Ill Angels Haunt Me’, Gemma Seltzer‘s ‘My Sister Like This’ or Kate Pullinger’s ‘Estranged and Unanticipated’), alongside the Kafka-esque transformation of PJ Carnehan’s ‘A Changed Man’ – a transformed man who wishes he’d only turned into a beetle – and the fantastical in Catherine Rogers’ folklore-inspired ‘The Derby Poet’ or the downright odd narrator of ‘Frank’ by Claire Baldwin.

Despite Overheard‘s Western bias, there are some stories from elsewhere. In ‘Good Advice is Better than Rubies’, Salman Rushdie contributes a lovingly-constructed depiction of the Tuesday Women at India’s British Consulate, and evokes the dusty India where the rules are there but not always obeyed and the people get by in the gaps between them. Hanif Kureshi‘s ‘Weddings and Beheadings’ offers a different take on the viral beheading videos which so often finish off hostage-takings in the Middle East, and is both uncomfortable and fascinating.

There’s Adam Roberts‘ sci-fi hymn in rhyming couplets, ‘McAuley’s Hymn’, which blends an element of mystical devotion with a touching story of personal loss and sacrifice in a universe at once familiar and yet unique. In just a few pages, Roberts creates his world and, in the space of a single human soul, dramatises the age-old battle between religious morality and science. Religious devotion is taken to a more disturbing extreme by the narrator in Jane Holland‘s ‘The Cell’, which beautifully evokes the isolation of a nun’s cell and her gradual descent into either madness or anther spiritual plane. Rather beautifully, Holland lets the reader see this as both a loss of health and also an outcome to be desired and welcomed.

As with the best short stories, some of the strongest moments in Overheard come when writers drop hints but leave their reader (or listener, of course) to fill in the blanks. For example, Taylor’s own short and sweet ‘Synesthetic Schmidt’ does an excellent job of expressing its character’s long-held guilt, beautifully capturing the physical sensation and effects, giving just enough clues without spoiling it with explicit explanation.

With such a strong line-up of writers assembled, a mix of well-known and less well-known names, Taylor presents a quality anthology. As well as those already mentioned, there are entries from Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Louis De Bernières, Tania Hershman (author of Saboteur 2013-nominated My Mother Was An Upright Piano) and Joel Lane (whose own collection we’ve reviewed here).

The oral tradition pre-dates the development of writing, so it seems surprising that there aren’t more books like Overheard. We’re used to the idea of poetry being performed out loud and brought to life off the page; less so with prose stories. But with the increasing number of spoken word events across the country, performances of prose are becoming more popular and Overheard is unlikely to be the last such publication.

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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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Interview: Come Rhyme With Me

In Interview, Saboteur Awards on May 16, 2013 at 9:30 am

- interviewed by James Webster -

come rhyme

With the Saboteur Awards results to be announced at the Awards Party in just two weeks, we interview Best Regular Spoken Word Night nominees Come Rhyme With Me about their event and its unique food-themed format.

Let’s start with the basics: how long has Come Rhyme with Me been running and when/where does it take place?

Come Rhyme With Me will have been running for 3 years in July. Come Rhyme With Me takes place twice a month.

On the 3rd Friday of each month we travel to The Writers Place (9-10 Jew St) in Brighton and on the last Friday of each month we are based at Cottons Islington (70 Exmouth Market) in London.

How did Come Rhyme with Me come into being? Was it done with a particular ethos or mission statement in mind?

In 2010, Naomi Woddis put out a call for an event to take place at Cottons Islington. Dean and Deanna had previously curated events together at Lyric Hammersmith and were keen to establish their own independent event, one that promoted quality spoken word and poetry. They wanted to create an event they would pay to go to.

Come Rhyme With Me has a really unique spin on it with its “set menu of performers” and focus on food. What led to that decision?

Upon seeing the space and the restaurant the idea for a food and poetry night was formed. They pitched the idea to the owners (Beverley and Andrew) and Come Rhyme With Me was conceived!

You run nights in London and Brighton, do you find there’s difference in style/flavour between the events in different areas?

In 2011 Dean was invited to curate an event for New Writing South, an organisation that promotes writing and writers of all types in the South East of the country. Dean decided to bring Come Rhyme With Me, the event was a part of Brighton Fringe Festival and was a success. New Writing South invited Dean and Deanna to launch a regular Come Rhyme With Me at The Writers Place and so Come Rhyme With Me Brighton was launched!

Who have been your favourite performers that you’ve had at Come Rhyme with Us? What have been the other highlights?

There have been so many amazing performers at Come Rhyme With Me not to mention the performers that come through the appetiser (open mic) section. The Christmas party where we had an array of performers has been a highlight. Not to mention the successful collaborations between Come Rhyme With Me and Oval House Theatre and London Liming at Rich Mix.

What do you look for when you book performers for your “set menu?”

The menu is chosen with flavours in mind. What style the performer is and how they would fit in a holistic sense. Very few acts are rebooked though Starters are brought back as Mains or Desserts.

What have been the challenges of running a regular spoken word event?

Not so much challenges as standards. Come Rhyme With Me is all about quality of experience.

What is your opinion of the state of spoken word and performance poetry in London and the UK?

It’s strong and getting stronger each year. Events such as Come Rhyme With Me, Bang Said The Gun and Chill Pill are constantly bringing in new audiences and showcasing emerging talent.

If you’re trying to convince someone who’s never heard of Come Rhyme with Me to come to your events then what do you say?

The food element is a massive draw as are the unique line ups and open mic aspect. Dean and Deanna have also been praised for their ability to create a warm and welcoming environment for all audiences. Why don’t you Come and Rhyme With Us!?

And finally, have you heard of Sabotage before (if so, what?) and are you pleased to be nominated for a Saboteur award?

Come Rhyme With Me is very pleased to be nominated for a Saboteur award. It’s a first of hopefully many. Massive thanks to all those who nominated and have voted.

Come Rhyme With Me is run by Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger. They’re cool, check them out.

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Front Lines Anthology

In anthology, Saboteur Awards on April 28, 2013 at 1:30 pm

-Reviewed by Nick Sweeney-

The stories are introduced as interpretations of ‘modern society’ conveying foreboding, dreams and apprehension. I think that one way of gauging decent writing is to see how well it reflects its socio-political environment (among other criteria, of course) and to my mind these stories do the job more than well. They are also well-written and entertaining.

Front Lines Valley Press reviewed by Nick Sweeney

Editor Dan Formby’s ‘Dead Stone’ opens the collection. The eloquent language, and the feel of the story, is reminiscent of Dostoevsky, which sets up certain expectations in the reader. His narrator sketches his initial journey:

I would not say that the exploration I undertook was much of an adventure. It did not require the traversing of treacherous chasms or unknown lands, but it was exactly what I wanted it to be; a removal of society from my life – or at least, the society that I was a part of and had come to deplore.

There is a sure hint of Raskolnikov in his seeking to escape from ‘a country at the height of vulgarity’. The narrator’s life among the homeless, and his meeting with a self-styled leader of homeless men, who speaks verging on the flourish of an orator, also takes the reader into the short stories of Franz Kafka, and Kafka’s often anonymous characters’ search for a self that cannot exist in the world around them.

It works very well on an allegorical level, although the story remains open-ended, leaving the reader wondering, and with the option to decide what might happen next.

The main character in Felice Howden’s accomplished ‘Stop Gap’ is in transit in small-town Britain after a visit to the US. His encounter with a kid in a run-down pub has a genuine sense of foreboding to it. There is a telling moment of chill when Roger realises that he ‘had nowhere else to be until the next day, and the kid’s eyes were suggesting something deadly that roused a sharp interest in Roger’s mind.’ The story imposes a kind of helplessness on the reader, as well as on Roger. It is full of sharply-drawn characters, instantly visible, unforgettable: a boy with ‘blonde hair and a jaw that could slice through stone… shudders like a mirage’, another vomits, looks up ‘with eyes like black holes in his head’, and a big guy is ‘laughing, scared’. Since Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, it’s difficult for any writer to come up with a new take on the stoner household, but Felice Howden achieves it with great verve.

One of the themes running through David Whelan’s ‘Viral Marketing’ is the western world’s voluntary entrapment by tools that we should be controlling, such as TV and computers. It also focuses on the sometimes strange relationships between people who meet in cyberspace, in this case while rivals in a bidding war. The losers decide to meet in real life:

The next to enter was a woman. She told him her name was Norton and that she wasn’t particularly good at conversation.
‘Conversation?’ Rupert asked.
‘Yeah – you know, talking. I prefer to write. It’s hard to say what you mean, but it’s easier to write it.’

Norton is a gem of a character, her meeting with Rupert one of the best scenes in the story, which cements the senses of fracture and dislocation – a disturbing scene, rendered with expertise and understatement. In other stories within the story, a man undergoes the paradoxical scene of a shared experience – watching a football match in a pub along with a roomful of football fans – in which nobody shares anything, as nobody is aware of anybody else. Whelan has nailed the condition of many people in our modern, western life in these scenes; most of his characters have become desensitised to whatever might have once seemed normal. Nobody has done it to them; they have used those tools that could be a boon to destroy themselves in this way and to lose what people may once have called their souls. This motif reminded me of Greek myths and, of course, the misuse of the free will given to people in Christian mythology.

That’s not all that is going on in this multi-layered story – there is the encroachment of America into the Middle East, China’s taking on of the western world, and the small matter of nuclear war. There is also an anxiety about the world’s scarcity of water, and, of course, the greed for it as for any scarce commodity. Whelan is addressing the fears of our times here, a big ambition for a short story. And he pulls it off; the black humour lifts it soaring beyond po-faced environmentalism or up-itself sci-fi.

You have to feel sorry for Malcolm in James Mcloughlin’s ‘This Hopeless War’, chained outside Liverpool Crown Court to hassle passers-by in protest at the incarceration of his brother, Justin, convicted of manslaughter after a trial by media. His protest, emotional and rather romantic, soon becomes that staple of British life, the ‘town centre nuisance’.

The words made sense to him, through the fog of injustice; he just couldn’t render them into any sort of coherence for others, so he had become a joke, scorched by the burning belief inside and the twisted image out.

It is this lack of coherence that is one of the pitfalls of translating emotion to protest; what can be a good idea in principle can go wrong when it is executed. But worse, there is the apathy which follows when novelty wears off, leaving Malcolm ‘at the mercy of his own estrangement from society’.

Ryan Whittaker’s ‘Climb’ is full of haunting images, framed in an expedition up Everest, which stands as a challenge to mountaineers, a religious focus for the Nepalese, and, ultimately, a graveyard, studded with decomposed bodies still wearing designer sunglasses and cold-weather jackets, with heart rate monitors blinking out a steady zero. It is also the search for a lost son, and a lost relationship.

On the same theme, Nathan Ouriach’s ‘Patrick’ traces a relationship to a phrase that sums up its seeming decline: ‘Looking back at the bed I see she has dribbled on my pillow. I used to think it was sweet but now it is just her saliva on my pillow.’ This tale is made up of such statements, putting the reader immediately into the story.

I’ve heard rumours of the short story’s demise ever since I started reading them, but on the evidence of this collection, it’s alive and well, and it’s good, and a relief, to see it in the hands of writers so young and talented.

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