"Bath Short Story Award 2017" (Brown Dog Books, 2017)

When assembling an anthology an editor might normally try to offer balanced content. Such an objective wouldn't be in the mind of a judge producing a short-list. Nevertheless, there's sufficient variety here.

• "This is all mostly true" - Meta-fiction disguised as first-person mental disorder? Literary showboating? I think it's a gamble that pays off.
• "Performance in the hills" - A woman who's been a widow for a month rides round her hill farm's boundary. Some lads came to buy a dog off her. She turned them down. She catches one of them apparently about to destroy an occupied nest. She injures him, makes him bleed. He claims he was only going to pretend, so that his mates (who made him do it and were watching) wouldn't hurt him. She apologises and in return offers future use of her horse. When she and her husband had discussed reincarnation, her husband wanted to be a barn owl and she wanted to be a pampered cat. Some nights later she walks the dog around the boundary, dressed in black, unseen. She sees the boy on the horse. He has a torch in each hand, teaching the horse tricks. He's good. Then an owl flies overhead. I liked the gathering density of symbolism - identity boundaries, respect for life, etc. The mention of reincarnation is a bit much though.
• "Forget me not" - Virginia (wife of Henry, mother of Anne) is becoming forgetful. Still still recalls the names of many garden plants - the garden was always her domain. Anne tries to label the plants, the way she labelled things around the house. Henry selectively digs them up - he's no so good at recalling their names.
• "Breaking the glass-blower's heart" - Camilla (au pair?) is in Joanne and David's house. Joanne's a glass-worker and a piece that's of of sentimental value has been broken (by the kids, who Camilla let loose?). Camilla and Joanne have never got on. Camilla has to go. But first she picks up the largest shard ("something from the glass-blower's heart", says the final sentence) to take back to Spain. I guess that either with the kids or the husband, Camilla feels she's been more of a success than Joanne has? It's mostly from Joanne's PoV though we slip into Camilla's PoV at too-convenient moments.
• "Everything must go" - A recently widowed woman thinks she hears noises in the loft. She lets things slide, then starts tidying up - the garden first. She buys a new bed. We learn that he used to hit her. She goes in the loft and clears up.
• "North ridge" - The story begins with "Gone four o'clock. So, it's true then. From the car you can see the path I took this morning. That's where I'll come from. When I come". On the next page there's "Scream. You could scream. Or cry. That would be normal in this situation. But you don't. As you knew you wouldn't. As I knew you wouldn't. My wife, the stoic.". The "I" is a husband who's decided to walk into the mountains in winter. The "you" is his wife who's waiting in a car with their son for the husband to return. Then on the next page there's "In some languages, the pronoun 'you' is different in the singular and plural. French, for example. Vous is plural; tu is singular. Your son can be translated as votre fils or ton fils. In English, the pronoun stays the same. That's something to be grateful for, isn't it?". How does the "I" know what the "you" is doing? The husband could be dying from exposure (that seems to be his intention) or even a ghost. He could be imagining things.
• "Big bones" - Marie, 8, has 7 sisters called Marie. English father, French mother. They've been living in England for a year on a farm, arriving from France. She might die in the end. Didn't see much in it.
• "Speak no evil" - The narrator (a male teacher?) is at the bedside of Jamal, a boy who's had brain damage after an assault. The boy's father thinks it's a racist attack. The narrator's cousin Andrew had brain damage 20 years before. The narrator's seen Jamal maybe kiss Danny Keane so he goes to Danny's house hoping to gather evidence. Danny father doesn't let the narrator see Danny, asking instead why the narrator's not married. We learn at the end that Andrew tried to kiss the narrator just before his tragic motorbike accident.
• "Into the looking glass" - A 13 year-old girl has to go out on her birthday with her parents and her father's boss to a restaurant. Her mother flirts with the American boss, then tells her husband to take their daughter home and not wait up. There are Alice allusions, and the girl's jolted into the kind of adult life that she'd only seen on TV before, but I don't see how the story got in the book.
• "Hunger in the air" - 4 daughters find out what their mother (dead a day) left them. We find out about their lives and what they think of each other. Perky language.
• "Little comrade" - Sons of a family (in an ex-USSR country?) are gradually being taken away for military service. The 15 y.o. narrator has more lofty plans. His older brother gets him out of trouble at school by turning up in his uniform and making excuses.
• "Seen/unseen" - The narrator's a convict let out for a few days to attend his mother's funeral. She'd stuck up for him. Visitors feel awkward with him. When the corpse seems to jerk he has to go to the toilet to vomit. When he sees himself in the mirror it's like seeing himself for the first time. He recalls when he was once brought into a police station handcuffed. He saw an old lady sitting, then realised it was his mother. She had a blank expression having not yet recognised him.
• "Laughing and turning away" - A Brazilian girl studying at a US college recalls being held at gunpoint twice. She's sharing a room with her lesbian lover. She gets a phone call saying that her brother's been shot dead. She realises that her female submissiveness had saved her when mugged. She goes home. She doesn't return to the States or reply to the e-mail of her lover. She seems to have decided to be submissive, not telling her family about her orientation.
• "Then I am gone" - Vanessa has a twin sister who's been a missing person for a few weeks. We later learn that their mother disappeared a while before. Vanessa goes to the fairground, repeatedly thinking she sees her sister. She looks around a freak exhibition, asked the owner about the Siamese twins. She goes into the hall of mirrors, sees herself as so thin she's almost not there.
• "Paid in full" - An old man, back in the French town he stayed in as a child during the occupation, is helped to the centre by his grand-daughter plus her boyfriend who photographs the pretty scenes. He recalls finding a body in the river and taking things from the pockets - a coin which he kept, and some odds and ends that he hid - before freeing the body to float away. Germans had found the hidden items and in retribution killed 3 townsfolk at random. He has returned to somehow atone. He's led a good life, his grand-daughter says. He buries the old German coin in a flowerbed.
• "Hollow" - Kas, 18, is doing casual work in a chicken processing plant. She tells her friend that she's had a miscarriage. Actually she had an abortion. She's asked to do some gutting, but she can't face it - it reminds her of the operation. So she walks out. Too blatant for me.
• "Nico and Moliere" - It's 7.20am. Nick is waiting for Molly (a French teacher) at St Pancras, drinking Champagne. They're leaving to live in Paris - her dream. She's late as usual. He takes the EuroStar without her. No.
• "Bionic girl" - 8 y.o. Boyanna (daughter of Yugoslavian immigrants) is bullied by Ned, 10, on his bike. He has Yugoslavian parents too. She wants to use her special powers. In the end her mouth bleeds. I wasn't impressed.