Stories from Granta, Harvard Review, Harpers, Threepenny Review, etc. An audio book ably read. Set in Angelus in Australia, by the sea. Silos, fishing boats, food processing, water shortages. Interlinking stories. People sense something, then the moment's gone. The characters' internal monlogue is often over-articulate. The dialogue's more authentic.
- Big World - When the narrator arrived and started school, Biggie saved him from a bully. Since then he'd helped Biggie with his school work. They both failed the exam. They buy a van and leave without telling people. They pick up a plump girl thicker than Biggie. Watching how Biggie treats her makes the narrator aware of how he treated Biggie. The van catches fire. Their escape from school failure fails.
- Abbreviation - Vic, 13, goes camping on the beach with his family for New Years Eve. He meets Melanie, 16, who's bored too. She's missing part of a finger - a farming accident. They kiss.
I like it - Aquifer - A man reads that human remains have been found in a swamp where he used to live. He immediately drives 5 hours to be there. When he was a boy he saw a bully from his school drown there, the body never recovered. He thinks about how water evaporates and is drunk, how dead bodies are recycled. The same happens with time - "Time is in us, not behind"
- Damaged Goods - The narrator's the wife of Vic. She feels ignored. She relates how Vic liked a girl at school with a vivid birth mark on her face, and she knows about the Melanie incident. She wonders what deformity attracts him to her. She says that Melanie wrote a poem about 2 girls in a fire. Years later Viv met Melanie with her girlfriend. That night the 2 of them died in a car accident.
- Small Mercies - Dyson returns to Angelus with his 4 y.o. son after his wife's suicide. The parents of Faye, his school sweetheart, ask him to see her. She has a daughter that they're looking after which Faye's completing rehab. When he rejects her offer of sex she threatens to tell her parents that she had an abortion at 15 and that Dyson's mother paid for it.
- On her knees - When his mother, a domestic cleaner, is accused of stealing from a client, a law graduate helps her
- Cockleshell - Breakie becomes briefly obsessed with 15 y.o. Agnes as she spears dogfish on the mudflats in the evening. She's not doing it for money. She's not interested in him. She ends up being a surgeon.
- The turning - Raylene is friends with Cheri on a caravan site. Raylene's husband Dan is battering her. When Cheri and her husband move to a house, Cheri regularly visits. She wonders what the secret of their happiness is. She discovers that they're religious. After an incident, Raylene has to have stitches. The nurse's husband is Max's boss. He sacks Max.
- Sand - Max (12) tries to suffocate brother Frank (10) in a sand dune tunnel. He escapes.
Too minor. - Family - Frank, having walked off a football pitch in mid-game, returns to Angelus, evading the sports journalists. Surfing, he meets his brother Max who says how useless and cowardly he is. A shark attacks Max. Frank tries to save him
- Long, clear view - Vic's family moves to Angelus. His father's a policeman. He never quite integrates. To comfort himself he holds his father's rifle. He does a lot of watching. He feels that the locals are against him. When alone, he loads the rifle.
- Reunion - Vic and his wife (it's her PoV) go with Vic's mother to a family reunion. They find the house empty, end up in the pool, then realise they've the wrong house. Back home they have a revealing talk about families. "shiny bikes lay strewn askew on summer lawns" and "a servility that bewildered all of us" sound over-literary
- Commission - After her diagnosis, Vic's mother asks him to find her father, who's been gone 27 years, so she could see him one last time. Vic finds him. He's been sober for years, waiting to hear from her, feeling guilty. He thinks that Viv's mother really wants Viv and his father to meet up again. Vic suspects that his work drove his father to despair. The narrative flow's good.
- Fog - I like this. Vic's father's been in Angelus a year. He realises that the police are corrupt. He's become a secret drinker. He's called to help at a mountain rescue. A young female reporter teams up with him. They find the climber unconscious, legs broken as night falls. She takes a photo before helping. Their radio's broken. She's scared. They exchange stories. He takes her camera, not to confiscate it but planning to use its flash to signal to others their whereabouts.
- Boner McPharlin's Moll - A 15 y.o. goes round with the bad boy of town. No sex, and not much talk. They're both lonely. She enjoys her reputation. She uses words like "assuaged" and phrases like "I'd embraced the safety of the medium". She turns over a new leaf. Later, she visits him in hospital after baddies (or police?) broke his legs. He opens up about his mother, his inability to read or swim. He's never done much wrong. He teaches her to drive. Charley becomes her boyfriend but she prefers Boner's company, though she hardly sees him. After her exams, he organises a party - "Pink Floyd was blasting across the beach". They throw offal in the sea to attract sharks. After Uni she returns briefly. She's become a high-power diplomatic advisor. She has female lovers. She's called back to accompany him to a mental home. She looks around his shack, finds porn with pictures of her head taped on the bodies. She visits him about once a year. To the end he says he only did the driving. 4 policemen are at the funeral. As much a portrait of Boner than an autobiography.
- Immunity - The narrator approaches a 15 y.o. boy on a train. He's in a cadet uniform. She's in the year behind him at school. He hasn't noticed her. She's
been following him for 18 months and knows he's lonely. They talk about death, close shaves. Neither knows that Vic's sister is dying of meningitis.
She never spoke to him (Vic) again.
A rather weak piece. - Defender - Gail (34) and Vic (44) are off to meet friends for the weekend (though he has no real friends, thinks Gail. She also thinks that his only vivid experiences date from adolescence). There's tension between them. He's recently had shingles twice. She confesses to an affair - "The forest sighed". When they arrive at Fen and Daisy's he realises that they knew about Gail's affair (with a sleasy hotel manager). Fen and Daisy have given up being vets to look after a farm. Vic admires their decision. Vic goes for a lie-down, thinks through the day so far. He knows it seems strange that he's more upset about his professional reputation than being cuckolded. Meanwhile Gail and Daisy discuss Gail's future. Gail's become religious again. Vic starts
talking to Daisy's daughter, awkwardly.
Later, Vic tells Gail about some past events whose relevance she doesn't understand. She was partly hoping for anger rather than self-analysis.
Vic tries Fen's gun with clay pigeons, again and again. He impresses the kids.
Not one of the best pieces, though it ends well.
Other reviews
- Ann Skea
- James Smith (a collection of overlapping stories set mainly in one town, Winton again gives us fractured lives, drifting relationships, and several shades of the violence that can erupt from the bitterness of failure.
- Kirkus reviews
- Magdalena Ball
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