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Reviewed
by Sheila Cornelius/p>
Although
the competition attracted entries world-wide, half of writers whose
work appears in the 2008
Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology were born or currently
live in the Bristol area. The excellent quality of the stories is
enough to make one wonder if there’s something in the water.
Unsurprisingly,
most of the writers are published or multiple prize winners. Many have
studied creative writing at university, although local writing groups
are obviously a fertile source. A short biography heads each of the
twenty entries.
Reading the entries, according to the Chair of Judges introduction, was
not a cheerful task. The dominant mood was "apocalyptic" with recurring
themes of "illness, mental disturbance, old age, death and
suicide".
The
first four prize-winners each exemplify this in distinctive ways : in
Rebecca Lloyd’s The
River, a bleak estuary backdrop plays a redemptive role in
a story of a young woman and her dying grandfather; the voice of an
unhinged kidnapper in Derek Sellen’s Angel and Assassin
recalls sinister modern surveillance practices; in Catherine Chanter’s The Boys Guide to Winning No 1 –
Hide and Seek a damaged adolescent moves inexorably
towards a tragic conclusion whilst Anthony Howcroft’s The Cobblestone’s Sparkle
shows the insidious aspects of male bonding rituals.
Humour
comes in shades of black. In Susan Akass’s Facing Up to Things
a burglar inadvertently benefits a bereaved wife and mother. Fran
Landsman’s Life Sucks
makes a sinister point about adolescent double standards. Ian
Millsted’s Burying the
Presidents is about an entrepreneurial funeral director. A
ballad-like narrative style marks Nick Law’s Virtue in Danger,
celebrating the triumph of Bristol-born ingenuity over eighteenth
century debauchery in a city not far to the East.
Nostalgia
and fantasy act as correlatives. Ian Madden's narrator in A Peddler of Sorts,
remembers a travelling swimming pool on a Scottish island and a teacher
with a special mission. The simple pleasures of a day at the seaside
are celebrated in Rebecca Watts’s Going
Down Brean, my personal favourite. Joel Willans adds a
touch of magic realism to a wistful story of female oppression in Floating On By.
Similar
themes echo in foreign or historic settings. Irene Black’s The Loi Krathong is
about fighting to release potential in a tropical setting and Sue
Coffey’s Hunters and
Gatherers foregrounds female strength, with a chilling
denouement. A Belgrade-set tale with an historical twist and a symbolic
wounding mark Lee Taylor’s Unfinished
Business. Tim Weaver’s Close tells of
corruption’s consequences in a tale of a Cape Town police
officer.
Suspense
and horror feature prominently. The immediacy of the first person
present tense narrative grips in Intervention
by Charlotte Mabey, when a First Aider attends an emergency and in Alan
Toyne’s Tuesday Night
a less well-intentioned narrator deals with the aftermath of another
incident. Dominia McGowan’s Killing
Me Quietly shows how a contrived façade of respectability
cloaks domestic abuse. A horrific note is struck in Michael Karwowski’s
The
Goddaughter when a young child misinterprets adult
instructions. With immediate contemporary resonance, in Miranda Lewis’s
Ground,
an isolated woman tries to rescue orphans an unnamed war-torn
city.
I
thoroughly recommend this collection. It makes for enjoyable reading
and the stories seem excellent models for aspiring short story writers.
Intrigued? Read an extract
from the first-prize-winning story on BristolPrize.co.uk.
Sheila Cornelius
worked as Foreign Editor for a publisher in northeast China in 2003-4
and is the author of New Chinese Cinema (2002). She lives in London and
writes website reviews as well as fiction, specializing in short
stories.
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Publisher: Bristol Review of Books Ltd
Publication
Date:
2008
Paperback/Hardback?
Paperback
First
anthology?: Yes
Authors: Susan Akass, Irene Black, Catherine
Chanter, Sue Coffey, Anthony Howcroft, Michael Karwowski, Fran
Landsman, Nick Law, Miranda Lewis, Rebecca Lloyd, Dominica McGowan,
Charlotte Mabey, Ian Madden, Ian Millsted, Derek Sellen, Lee Taylor,
Alan Toyne, Rebecca Watts, Tim Weaver, Joel Willans
Buy this book (used or
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The
Publisher's Website: Bristol Books
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Book
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you liked this book you might also like....
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