13 stories. Over 250 pages. It begins with "Beach Boy", a well crafted piece where the narrator, a travel-grant-aided London poet, visits Nairobi and meets a cute Canadian who's on a break to write-up her pharma Ph.D thesis. But the local lads have their eyes on her.
I didn't like the 2nd story as much but I'm impressed by the difference of setting and language - 'See what I mean about you man?' New Kid said to his friends. 'Leave dem, man, let dem go bout their business, yeah? I don't want no trouble wiv none ah dem bwoy deh ... (p.50). There's a rap competition and the narrator's a wordsmith. He loses, but there's a twist.
Spider Man is online - the spider's a literary device that doesn't quite save the story.
"All woman" is in a stronger dialect. The narrator's a single mother of a 17 y.o. girl; they share social lives (and skunk). She resists having sex with a friend of her daughter.
In "Underground" the narrator's seduced away from his mother's graveside by a ghost, Ruth, who lived a century or two before. He has sex with her in a crypt - her home. He stays there for a few nights then takes her back to his place.
"Re-entry" sees a guy in his 30s - a computer games designer - returning to see his schoolmate, Drake - he didn't understand fifty percent of what Drake was saying because the slang had changed. The story doesn't really progress behind its scenario.
"Miama Heat" at 44 pages is much the longest piece. It might be the worst too. A black lesbian musical journalist has just split with her partner in an argument about petting their cat which is suspected of being gay. She goes to Miami, perhaps suffers homophobia, goes to a pole-dancing joint and feels sorry for the worst performer.
"White Goods" uses a London accent - the first-person narrator has been an antiques stall-holder for 15 years on Portobello Road. Not that much of a story though.
In "Anatomy of man" Mike (37) sees that Teri, an ex, is now a street prostitute. He mentions the sighting to his sister Cheryl, who's married, and has done well for herself, living in Cornwall. But he's by Portobello Road, unhappy, a poor photographer. He waits one night until Teri arrives, asks her for a chat. In fact she's a poet doing research. They go back to his place. She disappears before he wakes. She's left him 4 20-quid notes. Perhaps my second-favourite story.
In "The Chase" (first-person female) a woman sees a younger man in a bar who she used to know (perhaps when he was a boy?). She tries to sleep with him. The penultimate paragraph starts with "When I told you I was ill, you asked how I felt about dying".
"Gone-Away Boy" features a middle aged couple whose son is at University. They use his grass, play his music, make love on the settee, then drive to their caravan. It's dark. She's miscarried? She sits alone in the dark, smoking.
In "Passive smoking" the hard-working, non-smoking woman of a couple coughs up smoke when her partner smokes. She takes revenge by over-eating - he puts on weight. They split up and that's it.
"The bright side of the moon" mentions Palermo and Shalini, the couple from the first story. This time from her PoV she visits the family farm with an acquaintance - some interesting descriptions of the Nairobi landscape, but lacks impact.
An interesting enough book, though a somewhat disappointing one because I feel he could have made more of the stories. Most have interesting scenes or settings or characters but in few stories are all the components working at their best.
Themes? Sexual jealousy. The quiet male winning in the end. Not fitting in with those who stayed behind. Reunions (with old friends or places) where only one of the two has changed.
There's a typo on p.167 - "what did I have to loose if it was an illusion", and on p.195 there's "He's not co-oporating".
Other reviews
- Arja Salafranca
- Alan W King (Newland’s a bad, bad man in his command of different voices that give his readers no choice but to empathize for the wounded souls in these 265 pages.)
No comments:
Post a Comment