Books & Poetry

Black Bile Press of Ontario, Canada, published David Rose’s brilliant, if all too brief, short-story collection ‘Stripe’ in 2001. It also publishes Front & Centre, a little magazine of ‘hard-hitting new fiction’. Issue 13 (Can$5, email firth@istar.ca) contains stories from Canada and the UK. In Len Gasparini’s ‘Ghosts’ a son goes back to his hometown at Halloween to bury his mother’s ashes, but finds that if anyone is a ghost, it’s him. Alan Ram’s story, ‘Make Sure There’s Something in the Freezer’, narrated by a hilariously foul-mouthed and appallingly behaved scumbag whose wife suddenly drops dead while he’s stubbing his cigarette out on the kitchen carpet, is packed with amphetamine-fuelled episodes of compelling awfulness that make you keep reading in spite of yourself. The narrator of David Rose’s new story, ‘Back to Descartes’, a teacher, mixes cider and vodka with his friend T, a rough sleeper. The conversation ranges from Wittgenstein and cider sweat to T’s ex, Delphine; all the while a story slips by in the twilight, almost unnoticed. Rose is a subtle and rewarding writer who toils away in the small press deserving far wider recognition. I can’t think of a single other writer who might have come up with the following line: ‘I wondered, had I the hearing of a dog, would I hear the wind playing through the railings, like an Aeolian harp?’ Feature continues

There’s the slightest surrealist flavour to the latest issues of Ambit and London Magazine. The December/January London Magazine (£32 for six issues/email wwss@wwss.demon.co.uk) has David Andrew Platzer’s review of a major exhibition of Dadaist art in addition to short stories by Loree Westron and John Herdman. In Westron’s ‘Los Milagros’, a Mexican girl loses her virginity to a stranger with a big cock. That is to say, a passing traveller with a pet cockerel that puts on a sudden growth spurt in front of the local congregation. A pet is the key in Herdman’s ‘The Monkey’: a teacher brings her monkey into the classroom, little expecting that it will start masturbating in front of the children. The highlight of Ambit 183 (£6.50/www.ambitmagazine.co.uk) is a slyly entertaining short story, ‘De l’Amour (Divertissement)’ by Philip Seargeant, about an encounter long ago between the narrator’s grandmother and Eduardo Feuer, a ‘minor surrealist poet’. Seargeant interweaves historical detail and narrative invention with the subtle touch of a master storyteller. The appearance and reality of what he is saying are often some way apart. ‘She married a vet from a small town in Suffolk who treated her respectfully and avoided marital strife by encouraging her to enjoy her own company as much as possible.’

There’s a groundswell of opinion among frustrated short-story writers that the UK literary scene lacks an abundance of ‘markets’ for their work. The ever-spreading rash of anthologies spawned by creative writing courses is dumping a lot more short stories out in the world without really offering any more opportunities for those writers who complain about the lack of them, unless they’re signed up to the courses at, say, Birkbeck College (whose first Mechanics’ Institute Review was covered in a previous column; the second will feature next time), or now, Royal Holloway and Goldsmiths colleges. The Royal Holloway anthology, ‘Bedford Square’ (John Murray, £7.99), unhelpfully doesn’t always distinguish between its short stories and novel extracts – and no person of sound judgement would ever want to read a novel extract if the alternative was a finished, self-contained piece of short fiction – would they? Still, Joe Treasure’s ‘The Male Gaze’ feels like a short story and works on every level. David and Rebecca, an English couple working in California, are on their way to a party when they have a near miss on the freeway. The incident prompts David to drink heavily, despite being the designated driver, but the next accident to take place does not involve automobiles. Treasure writes with a relaxed yet firm grip on the wheel of narrative. He understands the power of signifiers and portents, his dialogue is smart and funny, and he has a unique, persuasive voice. His is a name to watch.

‘Goldfish’ (www.goldfish.gold.ac.uk, £6.99) tells you what you’re getting – novel extract, short story, life writing or poetry – but the book is set in a sans serif font that might look great on a poster or leaflet, yet is a bugger to read over almost 300 pages. Amy Prior’s story ‘London Routemaster’, an imaginative overview of lives caught in an insubstantial net of emails, blogs and bulletin boards, stands out for its bold co-opting of ex-punk rocker Richard Hell on to the cast list of, presumably, otherwise fictitious characters.Congratulations to the authors shortlisted in the National Short Story Prize: William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Rana Dasgupta, James Lasdun and Michel Faber. Trevor’s story, ‘Men of Ireland’, was reprinted in Prospect magazine last August, having previously appeared in the New Yorker. Lasdun’s story was published in the Paris Review. The stories by Tremain, Dasgupta and Faber appeared in their latest collections.