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joecam79's review
4.0
The latest Fiction Desk anthology took some time to arrive, but it was worth the wait. Typically, the featured works are strong on narrative - they are all, first and foremost, "good stories" which shy away from experimentalism for its own sake.
That is not to say that they are not original. Take for instance the first, second and third-placed submissions in the Fiction Desk's 2015 "Ghost Story Competition", each of which is included in the present anthology. None of them is your typical spooky tale. Alex Clark's "Poor Billy" plays around with our expectations of the genre, Anabel Graff's "Soup, Condensed" is closer to magical realism, whilst S.R. Mastrantone's "Home Solutions for Mould", although possibly classifiable as a "haunted house tale" is definitely more concerned with the pain of the living than with the return of the dead.
There are other examples of "subverted" genre fiction. I enjoyed James Mitchell's "Renaissance Man", somewhat reminiscent of The Truman Show but interesting in its conception. And the winners of the "Flash Fiction Competition" (Mike Scott Thomson's "Beat the Brainbox", F J Morris's "Two-timer" and Ren Watson's "The Buzzing within my Head") are notable for taking striking (and quite fantastical) scenarios and managing to develop them convincingly in just a few paragraphs.
The title of the anthology is a reference to the collection's recurring theme of "separation". Practically all the stories evoke in some way the idea of division, whether between individuals or, in a more metaphorical way, between the protagonists and their past or present identities. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the more "realistic" of the stories. In "Two Pounds, Six Ounces" by Hannah Mathewson, a daughter rushes to her mother's hospital deathbed but an electricity outage changes her plans; the protagonist of David Frankel's "Stay" takes care of a dog which reminds him of his lost son; a mother and daughter grieve for a loved husband and father in Claire Parkin's "Splitting Miles".
And then there's one of the stories I liked best: "A History Lesson" by Kate van der Borgh. It is a no-frills piece, the tale of a young history teacher who goes on a school trip to Italy soon after an emotionally-painful breakup. The character's inner turmoil is subtly portrayed and what initially seems quite an understated story starts to ratchet up the tension, leading to a not-entirely-surprising-but-equally-effective finale.
"A History Lesson" is one of a number of works in this anthology (two others being "Beat the Brainbox" and "Home Solutions for Mould") in which modern technology and particularly social media, play an important role. Perhaps this could be an idea for a future Fiction Desk instalment?
That is not to say that they are not original. Take for instance the first, second and third-placed submissions in the Fiction Desk's 2015 "Ghost Story Competition", each of which is included in the present anthology. None of them is your typical spooky tale. Alex Clark's "Poor Billy" plays around with our expectations of the genre, Anabel Graff's "Soup, Condensed" is closer to magical realism, whilst S.R. Mastrantone's "Home Solutions for Mould", although possibly classifiable as a "haunted house tale" is definitely more concerned with the pain of the living than with the return of the dead.
There are other examples of "subverted" genre fiction. I enjoyed James Mitchell's "Renaissance Man", somewhat reminiscent of The Truman Show but interesting in its conception. And the winners of the "Flash Fiction Competition" (Mike Scott Thomson's "Beat the Brainbox", F J Morris's "Two-timer" and Ren Watson's "The Buzzing within my Head") are notable for taking striking (and quite fantastical) scenarios and managing to develop them convincingly in just a few paragraphs.
The title of the anthology is a reference to the collection's recurring theme of "separation". Practically all the stories evoke in some way the idea of division, whether between individuals or, in a more metaphorical way, between the protagonists and their past or present identities. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the more "realistic" of the stories. In "Two Pounds, Six Ounces" by Hannah Mathewson, a daughter rushes to her mother's hospital deathbed but an electricity outage changes her plans; the protagonist of David Frankel's "Stay" takes care of a dog which reminds him of his lost son; a mother and daughter grieve for a loved husband and father in Claire Parkin's "Splitting Miles".
And then there's one of the stories I liked best: "A History Lesson" by Kate van der Borgh. It is a no-frills piece, the tale of a young history teacher who goes on a school trip to Italy soon after an emotionally-painful breakup. The character's inner turmoil is subtly portrayed and what initially seems quite an understated story starts to ratchet up the tension, leading to a not-entirely-surprising-but-equally-effective finale.
"A History Lesson" is one of a number of works in this anthology (two others being "Beat the Brainbox" and "Home Solutions for Mould") in which modern technology and particularly social media, play an important role. Perhaps this could be an idea for a future Fiction Desk instalment?
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