- Letters from the men - 5 letters through the ages: by a castle-owner, a monk, a viking, Casanova, and a person on a spaceship who has all these letters (which were written without the expectation of being read). [Several unfaithful women. An interesting structure.].
- The wheel - a novella set in Cambridge decades ago. Brian arrives from a comprehensive school to start Eng Lit. He's sporty. He has a one-night stand with Danni, a Roedean girl, who's more interested in drama than her studies. She's in a relationship with John from St. John's though they both know it won't last. John sometimes visits Leni at a massage parlour - she's a suicidal cutter with a brother Marcus who deals in drugs. Sam got a 3rd, went to RADA and at 34 is back in Cambridge. We learn of Brian that "Little did he know that before him were years of striving and loneliness". Brian changes courses. John, Danni and Brian go punting and sunbathe naked with the dons. They have a threesome. After a joint, Brian "found himself suddenly out of control, unable to stop himself becoming serious". John attends an astrology lecture delivered by an astrophysicist. Brian, Danni and 2 girls have a foursome. Leni comes out of the police station and heads for the countryside. At the end, 2 years later, "we leave him there, Brian, his moment; whether he was on the outside or the inside only he would know". [A "La Ronde" romp]
- Juliet - First-person. She's a sex-worker. She stabbed an actor because he'd gone to her to do research. [Doesn't work for me]
- The present tense - John, a Cambridge philology student, goes to Rautken island, off Finland, to study their dialect, which is all but unwritten. He meets Carl, who's been studying it for years and has theories. The locals clam up when they think their language is being studied. Carl says he should meet the shunned (autistic?) daughter of a multiple murderer because she uses the dialect. The islanders had killed her father. One sleety day he goes to her isolated cottage. She speaks a strange language that he somehow understands. He tries to seduce the plain girl. He wants to marry her. He visits again. Carl has left him a note - "Be very careful, there is no present tense." Her father kills him. [I like the plot and much of the story]
- The mine - Bob is visiting the narrator, whose wife is Turkish. He has a long dream (recurrent?) about being a cave-dweller, by a silver-mine. He rouses the workers in Greek. It's the time of Plato. In the dream his wife played his mother. [I didn't see much in this]
- The photograph - Driving through Northern Italy, Ian, 18, is given an old, erotic photo of an actress by a shopkeeper. It makes old women he talks to suddenly appear young to him. He tracks down the old actress near Rome and has sex with her, living with her for a week, wanting to marry her. She thinks he's only after her money. He shows her the photo and explains. He suddenly becomes old. He drives back to the shop and returns the photo [I like the Dorian Gray-like plot. I was hoping for more of a twist/moral at the end. Maybe the idea is that once you confess your love, reality takes over from fantasy?]
- The prison - an Englishman in a Spanish-speaking country is in a prison by the sea. The wife of the prisoner in the next cell gives the guard an envelope that she thinks contains a permit for her husband's release. The guard reads it and throws it away, saying he doesn't believe it. Later the prisoner picks the letter up. It gave permission to the guard to do whatever he wanted with the wife. [4 pages. A good twist. It would have had a bigger effect if we'd known more about the guard]
- The federation of Necromancers versus the ghosts' unions - The dead come to narrator's door campaigning for their right to return in various ways. [4 pages. Several jokes.]
- Beyond Dorchester - [Over 25 pages - "The New Zealand count in his Citroen deux chevaux and his sixty-year-old plus fours goes hunting for young classicists and enjoys sqashing sibilants in Polish ... A grief strikes him mistier than the blackest sloe-bush in the Europe-hating hedgerows, deeper than our memory or understanding ... Just blush red, mutter about trout and trot off home, your head wrapped in paper. Your eyes buttons, one ITV one BBC. Within a decade they will all be gone. ... all rivers commute to the sea. The sea unfussy as death" etc. I'm not convinced.]
There's an impressive variety of styles and forms. All the pieces had at least something of interest. I noted some phrases -
- "But I don't believe in sewing up my own eyes to make a tapestry" (p.3. I like this, and it suits the character)
- "Aggressively unaware of her large breasts under her heavy cloak, she dipped her hand, half swan head half adder, into her 'pigeonhole' and took out what? An invitation?" (p.54. In this book adjectives and comparisons increase when women appear)
- "Her breasts so beautiful, so very white, the nipples dark, a world of their own yet somehow eloquent, denying as they invited" (p.62. Brian's PoV, so ok)
- "He felt so much fear on the inside that his external appearance became superficially relaxed" (p.76. Where else would fear be but inside? Where else would appearance be but outside?)
- In Cambridge "'offing the prof' was not such a blood sport as in American universities" (p.67. Useful to know!)
- "Depression is a curious disease, it has its own stages and laws. The only way to win is to pull it up by the throat and force it to become naked unhappiness" (p.90. I sometimes wondered in this book whether a quotable phrase fitted its context or the person saying/thinking it)
- "I suppose seeing a moon in dreams is like seeing the engine climb into the driving seat of your car" (p.175. I like the conceit)
- "Her eyes spoke of a weary task to perform, and in the depths of them he read a mixture of dread and heat which tailed off into an intense white light burning into him" (p.188. I bet her eyes weren't really like this)
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