"Exercises in Control" by Annabel Banks (Influx Press, 2020)

Stories from Manchester Review, Stockholm Review of Literature, Under the Radar, etc.

There's often a mise-en-scène feel, with details of the setting, situation and characters only gradually (partially) emerging. Sometimes there's nothing stable to latch onto.

• Payment to the Universe - an office cleaner works their way around "a fleshy lump in the corner, quivering, a bag on its head ... the twitching is less than yesterday"
• Susan Frankie Marla Me - a woman goes on outings (shopping) etc with 3 influencial women in her life. The 3 passages have similar templates, involving a comparison of their men.
• Exercises in Control - A tube station worker notices that a woman regularly feeds a mouse on the tracks. She shouldn't do that. He buys and halves a mouse. One morning he puts the halves on the track for her to see. I like it.
• Rite of Passage - A man goes out with a quirky, rather shy girl. While sharing fish and chips by the sea she goes in a cranny and won't come out in case it's bad luck. But she does when she's told that the car-park's about to close.
• Limitations - Most sections start with "You're not a bad man", continuing (rather abstractly at times) with deeds and explanations.
• Free Body Diagram - it seems the female narrator likes taking risks with dating, preparing for the worst by pricking her name on her arm for the pathologist to find. She hitchhikes, she runs alone through woods where a man doesn't have a knife - he's collecting holly with scissors. When she starts enjoying conversation with someone she likes, he makes an excuse and leaves. A lorry driver turns out to be kind, giving her a lift to her door.
• Momentum - It's the youth's turn to help Dilly at a fete. Dilly (who looks like an old hippy - his wife left him decades before after his drink-driving. His voice "rumbled and scraped like a skateboard") sets up his gear, a sort-of wardrobe without doors or back. The youth plays along that it's a time-line portal. Little kids go through wondering what's changed. A little boy comes with a dead kitten. Dilly walks through the portal with it. He turns around and it's gone. The youth can't see how the trick was done. At the end, Dilly invites the youth to get in his car and have a pint. Perhaps my favourite so far, maybe because I recognise the style.
• With Compliments - I don't know what this is about. Here's a section - "In your bedroom you'll find a bed for sleeping. You may occupy this space from ten to six, eleven to seven or midnight to eight. There are no other slots. There are no clocks. There is no time.". The final section is "While going about your day you will not be able to speak. You will forget. Please do not worry. You will find your way back. You built this place. It is yours."
• Harmless - A man eying a woman falls down a hole. There's not much to this.
• A Theory Concerning Light and Colours - The protagonist, a London science student, starts having a relationship with a female lit student (known as "you") who is synaesthetic. They talk about Newton's theory of light. When the lit student starts going out with someone else, the protagonist gets into their ex's room and paints the objects there, ending by throwing a pot of paint over the bed and rolling naked on it. The story's ending is "it can be no longer disputed whether there be colours in the dark, nor whether they be the qualities of the objects we see, nor perhaps whether light be a body."
• The Higgins Method - "So, this is life after" is the start. Eliza is the character's name. "My Fair Lady", I guess. Language is clearly a theme -

  Let me try again. Words live in the air, not spelt out in their school uniforms or passport photos. Real words exist only in the mouth, formed by labial touch, fricative twists, nasal constriction. Words transmute. Breath, captured life, encodes that life. But you have to get it right.

  then later

  Sound as a product of movement. Phrasing as a modulation of sound. Language is between the sin and signal: made with the mouth, with interrupted breath, before marks on the substrate capture meaning. Also marking a spot where something has been buried. Go away, or I keep you safe, or be quiet now.

  I'm confused.
• Common Codes - Chat-up tactics. Innocent lies with unforeseen consequences - "Their brother was gone, and my lie had made their pain worse". Later

  And that's when it happened. Felt like an alien invasion. Was probably learned behaviour. This monkey-see, monkey-do brain, this dance picker-upper, triggered muscle memory of an action I've never performed. Because he had opened his arms and stepped forward. Do you see? Can you picture this?

  Well partly, but you don't make it easy.