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Ailsa Cox is a fiction writer and critic, with a special interest in the short story genre. Her other books are Writing Short Stories (Routledge), and Alice Munro (Northcote House). Her fiction has been included in magazines and anthologies, including The Virago Book of Love and Loss, Metropolitan, London Magazine, Manchester Stories 3 (Comma Press), and Transmission.
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"So
what makes me think I’m going to find Michael, with his superhero
looks, leaning over a balcony ready to fly, no tricks, no strings, no
coke, no heroin. I carry chalk with me to write in the pissy
stairwells: I’M LOOKING FOR YOU MICHAEL. That way I can tell where I’ve
already been."
Reviewed by Annie Clarkson
The Real Louise and Other Stories,
is an eclectic collection. Despite many stories being set in Manchester
and Liverpool in the UK, despite most of them being concerned with
relationships, there are many voices, narratives and types of stories
all gathered together. Long stories, short short stories, child voices,
inner voices, stories that span a lifetime or five minutes.
Her Old Self Again, a story of
a bitter old woman who suffers a sudden onset of dementia, but her
identity is brought into question when a researcher says she is the
conspirator to an adulterous murder when she was young. Be a Good Girl is a vivid short
short about a girl who isn’t allowed to go to the toilet when she
visits her relatives. The Memory Room
is set in a future where you can erase memories of films you have
already seen.
Ailsa Cox writes with precision, in a way that illuminates small
details of people’s lives. For example, these lines from Into the Sun: "Paul was Jessie’s
best friend. They were mates. They knew each other in the dark." We
learn so much from short sentences, brief information. Characters are
distinct and familiar. We share their hopes, their lies and
contradictions, their imaginations, their truths. Mostly they are sad,
tender, frightening (in an ordinary everyday way). We observe
relationships that are so broken down that the only way a husband can
communicate with the wife he shares a house with is to post a letter,
only to find it is returned with "not known at this address" written on
the envelope. These are stories which made me ache they felt so "real".
Biting Point is about a woman trying to learn to drive, while
contending with her own anxious and intrusive thoughts. Her own inner
voice battles with memories of things her mother and father have both
said, and her inner-noise becomes so loud it's impossible to
concentrate. Into the Sun is
another fragmentary narrative where multiple voices/thoughts/memories
interrupt each other: radio news from Baghdad cut up with Jessie's
thoughts, Wilfred Owen, conversation and description of what is
happening now. The style replicates a jumbled mind, a busy mind without
much focus. It makes sense because of the juxtapositions in the
narrative and connections we make as readers:
"There have been no declarations, no steps closer to war. You just wake
up and it’s happening like middle age, like the death of love, as if it
was always like this."
This story is about all of these things. The repetition in this story
is like guns or a disturbed mind returning to the same point over and
over trying to make sense of it.
Another pleasure from this collection for me was the many stories set
in Manchester. There is something exciting about reading short stories
about places we know well. Stories like, No Problemo where Max and his
mum's new boyfriend lose each other in the Arndale Centre; the
brilliant Just like Robert de Niro set in the old Hulme before the
Crescents were knocked down; and Story Swap with its movement through
Manchester from Deansgate down to Cine City in Withington (also no
longer there) and their shared observations of people inhabiting the
city. The geography is specific, pinning down the social authenticity
of the stories, and helping a reader like me (very familiar with
Manchester) understand that even though Just like Robert de Niro is a
sad almost bleak story observing loss and decline within an area and
its relationships, hope exists in the knowledge that outside of the
story, the Crescents were eventually knocked down.
Ailsa Cox also has a
wonderful way with "voice". Sex Etc for example, is a wonderful first
person narrative about a lad with dyslexia (maybe) or literacy issues.
His spelling is appalling - "please" for "police" for example, - but he has
a brilliant outlook, funny, and very likeable:
"If you think I’ve got one of those syndromes the dog who barked or
something that’s not what I’m saying."
I found it touching, and the voice was perfect, perhaps some might find
it gimmicky, but for me it was the contrary.
This collection is like
the story Making it Happen, - it is about everything and nothing – a
divorce, wedding, a relationship breaking down and a new relationship,
character, getting to know people and not knowing them, being together
and alone. It reads beautifully, seamlessly, but is difficult to
describe. It covers decades and many different kinds of relationships -
between grandmothers, mothers and daughters, between lovers or
ex-lovers.
Yes, there were a few stories that I was less interested in
or didn’t quite "get": I must have missed the point in Twentieth Frame;
The Memory Room has a brilliant sci-fi premise but didn’t seem fully
realized; and November was too fragmentary for me to give it emotional
resonance. But, there are seventeen stories in this collection, and I
found plenty more that said YES to me.
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