Though they're not household names, the authors have many credits - Best British Short Stories, Guardian, TLS, Ph.Ds, LRB, Costa Award, The Stinging Fly, etc.
What many of these stories do (and do well) is quickly construct a non-standard world - a mental and physical one. Such worlds can be fragile - an out of place word can easily destroy the illusion, and a short story hasn't the time to recover. There weren't any such problems in this book. Often in these pieces the mental, internalised world begins to take over from reality.
- "Target Practice" (Regi Claire) - 2 time-lines involving one protagonist - Kricket and the older, revengeful Diana. I soon got the idea that the title would have a double meaning
- "The Night Nurse" (Jude Cook) - a 45 y.o. gay immigrant nurse takes revenge on a bigoted, short-tempered father by mistreating his baby son. Too predictable for me. See the author's notes.
- "Bloodstock" (Paul Davenport Randell) - The main character's been snatched from homelessness to work with a gang of men on a farm, sleeping in trailers. It's a tough and bleak, punctuated by flashbacks - he used to have a happy life, twin boys. Something went wrong. The men are quite capable of killing newcomers for fun, even boys. When a boy arrives, the narrator puts him out of his misery. See the author's notes.
- "Touch" (Sarah Dobbs) - online fantasy/obsession collides with reality. The main character's skewed PoV is well maintained.
- "Half" (Nick Holdstock) - ends well. The Josh/Zoe part seemed too long.
- "Wise Man" (Georgina Parfitt) - 4 youths have fun on Xmas Eve, but there's some sexual tension between them - Dante wants Lucy, but Lucy's with Tom. Lucy sets Dante up with a girl from school who they meet by chance, locks the 2 of them in a caravan. From Dante's PoV we witness the conflicting emotions then the relief when the girl says she wants to go home.
- "Peasant Woman Number Four" (Angela Readman) - a couple decide to escape the rat-race, live in an isolated cottage. They want a child. The wife (who once ran over a child who was distracted looking at her phone?) gets a job in a nearby town, a museum of historical recreations (low-tech). She dresses up, stays in role as a gamekeeper's wife. One day at work "they switched her husband" - the new one's a tall, shy blond ten years younger than her. She and her husband have trouble conceiving. See the author's notes.
- "The Provenance of Objects" (George Sandison) - Shades of M. John Harrison or China Mieville. It's never explained quite what's been discovered under London. Meanwhile, office life goes on - "He takes reports from one and folds the sheets into origami animals, which he leaves in the next. He has seen a way to make a spider, but can't decide if he approves of the cut required." and so does non-office life - "He adds up the numbers on the tops of buses, displeased that they don't total round figures."
- "Various Cuts of a Holstein" (Rachael Smart) - A women's having a meal out with a man she expects to spend the night with. Sections are subtitled after parts of meat and used as sources of analogies. "It is a hangover from childhood, this ability to compartmentalise a potential lover's body parts and focus only on them when the rest of him is unfavourable. Gets her through the most unstimulating of nights".
- "The Berg" (Richard Smyth) - how do writers get these ideas? A quirky character portrayed in an interesting way in an unusual setting. One doesn't read such stories for the plot.
Overall, well worth a read.
Typo (I think) on p.71 - "killing time by around stuffing feathers in a quilt"
Other reviews
- skylightrain
- Sam Edwards (In rare places, the momentum of Unthology 11 falters due to the inclusion of a narrative that feels forced. Subtlety and pragmatism create the foundations for believable and engaging relationships, but when these aspects are absent, characters become empty stereotypes and the plot rings hollow. ... For the most part, Unthology 11 is a success. Its authors, with varying levels of confidence, have created believable, grey worlds in which their protagonists have arrived at a figurative crossroads – where, in that space and time, their next decision means everything. Sometimes intriguing, and often disturbing, these stories predominantly adhere to the spirit of “the hinterland”)
- Storgy (Various Cuts of a Holstein ... in my opinion is the best in the collection and quite possibly the best short story I’ve read this year)
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