"Paradise block" by Alice Ash (Serpent's tail, 2022)

Stories from Popshot, etc.

• Eggs - The narrator - a schoolgirl - has a little brother Vincent and a (useless?) mother - "she". Min, the old neighbour, sometimes comes round to help. They live in a flat - Paradise Block, in a town called Clutter. They're in debt. Their flat catches fire. They start eating more eggs. The mother starts painting the burnt walls, using watercolour paint. Min tells the narrator that she's the mother now. The narrator strains her back and is hospitalised for a little while, needing a stick. She overhears that she has varicose veins and arthritis. Her mother wears the narrator's school uniform to take Vincent to school, returning with a gold star. She's taken the narrator's headphones to listen to the narrator's favourite singer - Robbie Williams.
• Planes - Bennie Dodd, 9, lives in Plum Regis with his single mother Elaine who does phone work (mostly sex). He writes long (surprisingly literate) letters to his father c/o "Sunny Air". Bennie thinks his father's a pilot who sends him a model plane each birthday. He wants his father to collect him. He thinks of running away using his mother's stash of cash. He discovers that his mother's made up the story about his father for his sake. Actually he's a caretaker of a flat in Clutter. His classmates learn about his mother's job. His teacher, Miss Michelmore is concerned. He talks to Jake Standing, who comes from a bad family.
• The Flea-trap - “I” and “you” have a baby and kittens. The “I” uses words like “muster”, “subtly”, and abundance”. Their bedrooms are in a flat basement, with other rooms on the ground floor. They buy a flea-attractor and take shifts to obsessively kill the fleas. Meanwhile their child-carer Angelique takes their baby away. They’re unconcerned. They eject the kittens. No
• You - After being engaged for 5 years, a man’s left the narrator, Rose. She goes to a club looking for You. She brings a man home to Flat 4. He fails to get an erection. 3 pages (No)
• Timespeak - Mr Grisco delivers groceries to the narrator, Mr Cornflower, whose been a customer for 15 years. The Department store opposite is putting Mr Grisco out of business.  Elaine often  phones the narrator about his funeral plans. They’ve become friends. He watches kids throw eggs against a tree. He goes deaf. Mr Grisco visits more often, storing some goods at the flat, taking calls. A woman turns up.
• Hungry - The male narrator watches a woman messily eating. The narrator’s mother (15 years younger than aunt Min, a widow who works in the Stockings section of the department store) is eating a burger. They go to Min’s flat. There’s a knock at the door. It’s the woman, asking the narrator out.  5 pages. (No)
• Ball - John, about to go and collect Benny and bring him back for a short stay, is anxious and starts drinking. He’s not seen Benny for years. He’s paying for the semi that Benny and Elaine live in, with Paolo. He misses the train. Elaine phones him and puts Benny on the phone. He’s 12 and not happy. John goes to his local, recalling a visit to the fair with Benny. Benny had refused a balloon because he didn’t want to be sad if it blew away. John drinks with Bill Standing and a barmaid, moaning about Elaine.
• Complaint -A department boss sees the girl (3rd-person protagonist) at the bus stop. He’d touched her up once and called her Sexy Bum. He moans to her about popular department boss Dorian Bell. He wanted to expand his Glasses department. He's sent her a poem. Later the boss txts her to say that Min's legs are bad. He tells her to come to the admin offices. She's asked to provide harrassment evidence against Bell. When she returns to the Glassware section her flatmate Pinkie has taken her place. The boss invites her out. A man on a bus offers her a job at another store.
• Doctor Sharpe - Rose Durrell (1st person) goes to the doctor, hoping he'll fancy/love her. She finds porn on his computer. She lives in flat 17. Next time she goes to the surgery the receptionist tells her she has mental problems and should go elsewhere. She tries to make herself really ill. She recalls visits from Elaine years before. She cuts herself repeatedly and drives to the surgery. He puts her to sleep and stitches her face. Back home she phones her mother for the first time in 7 years, leaving a message that she found a man but he turned out to be shallow, only interested in her looks.
• Black, dark hill - "Our girl" and "her boy" are on their first holiday, together in a boat on a river. The girl's shadow in the water it treated rather like a person. The boat they're in collapses, disintegrates. He's caught up in fishing wire and goes still. She integrates with her shadow and floats away (interesting. Very unlike the other pieces. 7 pages)
• Sea god - Min, now a widow, has a son Crispin. She recalls her honeymoon when a woman dropped her bag over the side of the Isle of Wight ferry and Louie made sure it was retrieved. She has lots of junk (ex department store stuff) in her front room. Her washing machine's broken, so she goes to a launderette. She sits on the beach, sees an attractive man metal-detecting. They talk. Later she collects Louie's stuff and her jewellery in a bag and (we assume) dumps it in the sea. On the beach again, the man shows her the things he's found - a gold tooth (she'd trained to be a dentist), some of Louie's stuff. (my favourite piece so far)
• Bad elastic - Marie (21, quite comfortably brought up) and Shell (26, her baby in care - she wants it back) are a couple living in the flats. Shell is saving money in a drawer. Marie goes out with it intending to open an account but ends up buying an expensive dress, giving £10 (i.e. 3 pots of babyfood or 10 cigarettes) to a homeless woman, then getting mugged. Shell seems to be forgiving about it.
• John's bride - Annie Dodd (1st person - she uses works like "transfixed" and "slithered") didn't speak much English when they were married (John was 64 then). The doctor tells him to change his lifestyle or else. She cooks him food her mother had taught her - there are pages about her preparing stuffed squid (that looks like his heart). He dies. She's not upset. She does well out of the insurance. She meets John's son? (No)
• Note - There's a female caretaker now. She clears out Mr Cornflower's flat.

Various props recur - White Fingers, etc. The first-person diction doesn't match my image of the characters. Few betray strong emotions - I don't think we're invited to feel sorry for the characters.

Other reviews

• Kate Tyte (Poverty, alcoholism, mental illness, loneliness, and crime are all recurrent themes, but there isn’t any heavy, issue-based handwringing here ... Many of the stories are written in the first person, and all the narrators are unreliable ... ‘Planes’, my favourite story in the collection)
• Paul Spalding-Mulcock (this astonishing collection innovatively fuses Dirty Realism with darkly gothic surrealism and put me in mind of Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski and Chuck Palahniuk. Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe lurked in the shadows with David Lynch perhaps casting his eye over proceedings. I even picked up faint hints of Stephen King.)
• Fran Slater (I was particularly affected by ‘Planes’ ... And in ‘Bad Elastic’, the story of Marie’s desperation to escape battling with her need to cling on is so heartbreaking it had to earn a mention.)
• Connor Harrison (sometimes it feels as if a story ought to have taken more risks on the page. In ‘Planes’, ... as the letters continue, they come to feel too neat, too verbose for such a young writer ... in [John Dodd's] story, ‘Ball’, his thoughts and choice phrases rarely step outside the stereotype)
• Lydia Bunt (This world is characterised by frugality, but certain motifs repeat in this mix – the foods honey, wine, black bread and White Fingers biscuits. The colour pink is also a common presence)