An anthology of poetry and prose, with Elizabeth Baines, JG Ballard, Tony Harrison, Marina Warner, etc. Pieces are from Interzone, TLS, Oxford Poetry, etc.
I liked Ballard's, sometimes for old-fashioned reasons - "With its fixed and empty expression, her face resembled a clock that had just stopped". I couldn't finish the Tony Harrison section, or Alex Hamilton's (because of dialect like "It's jiss kiz sumbdi bisnae goat thi wurds thit yi should realize whit it's daein is speakin"). I've always liked Alasdair Gray's voice, and how it can encompass other voices. The intent of Harsent's story is lost on me, though I can appreciate fragments - "boats rise and slide on the swell". Hogan's is more interesting, especially if you like reading history. I sped through Lasdun's poems - "Now I recede, the years are like rough stones/ Glazed to a moonstone glimmer by the sea". "Crabs - whose flesh retracted from a violent shore/ To lie beneath a carapace of bone,/ Who lost the end of living in the means,/ Each in its private military zone", etc. I liked Bernard Mac Laverty's "End of Season" - I've read it before. Jeremy Reed's metaphor-based poems are ok - Buoys are "a boxer's nightmare ... inshore satellites ... Vigilant bulls, ... they too ... tug at a nose-chain, and snore hoarsely in storm"
Julia O'Faolain's contribution is a first chapter of a novel. A daughter is visiting a reich Italian family that her dead mother au-paired for. I've never liked the "There was a guest there already" construction (my italics). The final 2 paragraphs set things up rather obviously. Richard Thornley's "Casualty" is rather long. I found it sufficiently interesting. Marina Warner's narrator refers to herself as "you" and "I". It's a retelling of a bible story. If men - even cultured men - try to take advantage of a beautiful woman, is it ever her fault? In Paul Winstanley's "Pterodactyl" a male loner meets 2 little children on a beach. He wants them to learn lessons by watching how the birds fake injury, etc.
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