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Route Book at Bedtime
Ed. Ian Daley
Route Publishing 2010, Paperback
First anthology? No
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Authors: Pippa
Griffin, Chris Hill, Louis Malloy, Cally Taylor, Katherine Reed, Sam
Duda, Jo Cannon, Michael Nath, Sarah Butler, Wayne Price, Dave Pescod,
M Y Alam
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"It was dark when the
police came. Frank had been lying on the floor of the nest,
contemplating the threading of the twigs and grass of the ceiling which
didn't let through any light. He had even fallen asleep for some time.
He was miserable and getting used to the failure of the great
unveiling."
Reviewed by A J Kirby
The
Route Book at Bedtime is the twenty-second instalment in
Route Publishing's series of contemporary short story collections: a
slick presentation containing twelve stories which all take place at
one of life's threshold moments, in the liminal world between life and
death, innocence and experience, love and loss. It is bedtime reading,
and, in a way, the thread which pulls through all of the stories is
that
they are adult versions of the fairy tales which we've used to explain
the world to children as we tuck them up under the duvet and kiss them
on the forehead. These adult fairy tales feature bat caves and Snow
White, skipping, dancing and coping with baldness. But there's a darker
side too; violence and death lurk in the background ready to strike, be
it in the form of braining sheep with rocks taken from a dry stone wall
or the death of a father.
Where the anthology really succeeds (and where many fall down) is in
keeping an even tone throughout. Of course, this is due in no small
part to the quality of the writing, but it also has a lot to do with
editorial choice. There are no sleeping pills here; finish one of this
dreamscape of stories, and the temptation is to move straight on to the
next, perhaps pausing to set the alarm clock for just that little bit
later in the morning. Having said that, there are some obvious
stand-out pieces. By far the most effective story is Wayne Price's The Golfers; the
stripped-back, almost dirty-realistic prose displayed here calls to
mind Richard Ford's best work. At face value, this story is semi-comic;
malcontent boys playing pitch and putt and struggling with golf course
etiquette, but scratch below the surface and there is a tangible
tension. In the scorching, highly-charged heatwave, peace is a fragile
thing:
"The tarmac's cooking along the sides of the gutters and the thick oily
smell of it seems to carry up off the road with the heat shimmers and
roll along with us as we walk."
As in the best short fiction, in reading The Golfers you get
the impression that the world you've entered here for all of twenty
pages is as weighty as that of a full-length novel; the strange family
dynamics hinting at some terrible past trauma which they still can't
escape from. We learn about the static, "tar-pit" of their lives on the
estate through a series of strongly-written tableaux. The stultifying
boredom, the everyday mundanity of it; Nicky, the narrator, spends a
lot of time "absorbed" or staring off into space, drinking his mother's
booze. Alfie, his brother, is so disturbed by the unexpected heatwave
that he develops a pattern of worrying spasms, which make his arm move
"like part of some machine – jerking up and down between his throat and
hip". Then at the golf course as his rake "drags over and over the same
little patch of sand like a stuck needle on a record."
At first, Nicky
is cool towards his brother, embarrassed of him, but eventually, his
protective instincts are inspired. And for the first time, Nicky acts
to overcome the awful stasis, walking away from the golf course and the
two predators who are preying on the family unit. For the first time
Nicky feels himself "a companion to" his brother. In this minor escape,
there is the suggestion of how Nicky and Alfie can both escape their
fates.
Another strong story is Louis Malloy's Tragedy of the Commons,
the most original of all the stories, a tale which gives a whole new
meaning to the "nesting instinct". Sam Duda's The Parrot also
ranks highly, and extra meaning is extrapolated from it, due to the
fact that Duda confesses much of the piece comes from personal
experience. Which is something that also counts in MY Alam's favour. Smoke and Dust is
an extremely emotional portrait of a man whose father has a terminal
disease. This tale avoids any accusation of mawkishness thanks to its
excellent characterisation and telling detail.
Credit must also go to the three shortest stories in the collection; Jo
Cannon's Love on the
Rocks is a tender exploration of love and of ageing,
hauntingly well-written; Dave Pescod's concise Scalp offers a
real, unexpected cerebral sucker-punch; and Chris Hill's So Which is the Way From Here?
is an exercise in precise, Carver-esque prose.
Reading The
Route Book at Bedtime is like looking through a photograph
album full of the snapshots which make up a life, but at the same time,
it doesn't shy away from showing us those photographs which didn't
quite make the album. We're taken on a journey through teenage crushes,
love gone bad, love growing old, trying to rebuild, trying to escape,
dying. It's a collection containing stories which are at once
stunningly original and familiar. Just don't plan on getting any sleep
once you open the cover...
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