- Panic Attack - Ronnie, 5'6" on tip-toe is at a train station after visiting his mother. He sees a beared man - "It's not a hipster bastard beard he's got, and not the full Gandalf I-have-mice-in-here nonsense, either. Average beard. Not a while bloke trying to show off being Muslim." The woman beside her seems in trouble. He helps - not too much or little. She's had a panic attack. She and he got on the train in different carriages. We learn that he's been protective to his mother when young. He killed his nasty father, whose body wasn't found for weeks. He wants the women to find him and ask for help. No.
- Everybody's pleased to see you - At the Salazar bar/cafe/restaurant, it's like Cheers - if you're the right sort of person, it'll be like home. Chic too - "the Salazar's latest mirrors, said to have once reflected the Ceausescus". The clients are interesting - "You might take them for sisters ... They don't share a mother, they share a surgeon". Near the end we're told "We can all have the Salazar and have it forever, any one of us, anyone who is a Salazar kind of person". No.
- Walker - A bride of 2 days, walks after midnight barefoot from her hotel to the beach. She recalls the wedding ceremony, how her mother-in-law apologised for mistakes. The bride thinks she might have made a mistake, that she's not worthy of love. No.
- Waiting in the Jesus queue - The narrator thinks "No one ever gets to be spontaneous without rehearsing". He's rehearing a TV interview. He's a celeb, famous from a TV kids show that's long finished. He's in films now, and is thinking of writing a book. Chloe's left him. Invited to a kid's deathbed he fled. He's trying to recover. The worst so far
- Unanswered - Adopted, knowing he lived on a UK bombsite, the narrator as a boy sometimes left the house in night, being found by policemen etc. He married Julie. He learnt he was born in Germany. He ;lkstracked down the soldier involved with his transfer and discovers how he was saved in Berlin. They went to live in a house also on a bombsite. It saved his marriage. Julie died, childless.
- Inappropriate staring - The narrator (who repeatedly says she wants to see choughs and is thirsty) is separated from her alcoholic husband. She has a son, Peter. She's back in Jersey where each year holidayed with "uncle" Mort. She's sorting out his house. She finds letters and presents that were sent to her and returned to sender by her parents. She's visiting the Zoo. She watches a son and mother bicker about the son's wife. They comment on the gorillas' behaviour. Her parents argued. She and Peter don't. The son and mother stare at her as they talk about gorillas' maternal habits etc. Mort in his will said that he loved the narrator, who wonders if he was her mother's old lover. Was she his daughter? When the big male appears, the mother suddenly grabs the narrator's hand, saying "He looked at me". The narrator (reported speech) launches into a rant about injustice, racism, rape, etc. The crowd turn to watch. The mother weeps, the son suppresses his anger. (I like it)
- Am Sonntag - Berlin? She wakes late. She'd arrived the night before in borrowed clothes, in a truck. From her window she sees people relaxing by a lake. She recalls Laszlo being attacked and killed. She remembers summer days, hears a piano being tuned. She wanders in the big house as if in a dream, following the piano noise. Reaching the tuner, she realises that her husband, daughter and mother have gone, but she's alive. The ending is "It will be terrible, this surviving"
- It might be easier to fail - "I know he's not in change any more, but guilty's guilty" thinks the 1st person PoV who uses words like "implacable" and "demeanour". He keeps under observation the guarded house where his target ("darling of the people ... peacemaker between nations") lives. The narrator's daughter died in a hit-and-run van incident. The target's decisions were responsible for killing children. No.
- Point for lost children - Anne (Scottish, homeless, a battered wife who couldn't have children) is sitting on the floor at Leicester Square Tube station when Marilyn (a do-gooder?) sits beside her, trying to help. Anne remembers her therapy, her childhood. She counts if she feels stressed, counting seconds if there's nothing else to count. Marilyn tells her about her dead daughter and starts crying. The police move them on. They pass the place where lost children are dealt with. (It became rather formulaic/predictable as the backstories trickled in, but maybe that was a point. It's all first person, using reported speech, which breaks the standard guidelines.)
- Even words have meaning - It's 1944. Post-war exhaustion. An oxbridge war correspondent (1st person PoV) has crossed Europe to a desert. People are killing themselves (guilt, despair). He's lost confidence in the quality of his reports back home. We learn about a doctor who did mercy killings. His colleague Stillwell disappeared/died in strange circumstances. Perhaps he returns sometimes to kill them one by one. (I can see how this could have worked - a mind losing touch with reality having witnessed too many atrocities)
- New Mexico - The "I" (Phoebe) is recording her 100th episode of Post-Traumatic Podcast. No guests this time. She starts with an ad for a travel bag with lots of personal safety features. She left New Mexico at 13 after her mother left without warning and her father killed himself in the car she'd abandoned. Phoebe went to live with her mother's parents in Colorado. She started cutting, etc. 6 years ago, new DNA tests revealed that her mother had been the victim of a serial. The police called her in to show her photos that that the killer had taken - some only moments before her death, when she knew she'd die, her eyes looking into the future at Phoebe. (OK)
- Spider - Anne and Raph (an academic couple) are trying to hide from their kids Tom (7) and Deborah the fact that things are left on their doorstep - stones, poo, and (in the past) notes. They've moved to aa village from a city. Anne doesn't know the best way to deal with the spider in the bathroom. The children find one in the garden and aren't scared of it. They wonder about takingit to the bathroom. Some of the notes contain racist abuse - Raph's a German Jew. And she's black? Though it's daytime she goes round the house with the kids turning on lights "so that everyone can see us being happy when the dark comes"
- We are attempting to survive our time - A couple argue in front of people near the top of Cologne cathedral. The narrator thinks "I am holding back and being flexible because women are flexible and compromise ... I know he's always chosen women who will hurt him". He says she's just like his mother. She thinks he shouts just like her father. They descend to the city, hold hands again. "We are attempting to survive our time" is a quote from the Voyager craft. She thinks that "We live in a time when a bag with no owner can only hold terrible things."
There's no pressure to be brief. The extra words don't reveal more about the character - they're generic verbosity. There's often a revelation towards the story's end, some significant backstory detail (often involving a death) that's been withheld. Sometimes at the start we're explicitly promised a revelation.
Other reviews
- Alex Preston (Almost all of the characters in these stories are, as one of them describes himself, “unreliable in the head”, prone to visions and elaborate self-delusions, all in the attempt to get through the day)
- Chris Power (for much of We Are Attempting to Survive Our Time she constructs her stories in the most non-dramatic ways possible: this book is an orgy of telling, and it makes for exhausting reading. ... Numerous stories that sound engaging in outline are scuttled by their execution ... The best story here, by some distance, is the one in which showing far outweighs telling ... “Spider”)
- Lee Randall (Throughout this collection she traces psychological cracks to their sources, engaging our empathy ... Standout stories for this reader include ‘Everybody’s Pleased to See You‘ ... She excels at balancing disdain with empathy, and even her racist has his humanity.)
- Rosemary Goring (All but one of the stories here is in the first person. ... In places Kennedy’s writing is slack and repetitive, sounding more like the spoken word than the concision and allusiveness necessary for a memorable short story. The sudden reveals in several tales feel overly dramatic and manipulatively tragic, as if everything that matters most must spring from profound sorrow or loss. The bookends of the collection show Kennedy at her best. ... Panic Attack ... We Are Attempting To Survive Our Time)
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