"The weather in Kansas: short stories" by Crista Ermiya (Red Squirrel Press, 2015)

Stories from Structo and various anthologies.

• "1977" - The start is "Memet Ali was eight years old when a woman on his estate gave birth to a cockerel". It's an estate in the UK with many Turks. Suleyman (about 50) had returned from a holiday in Turkey with a young wife Elif then a year later died from a heart attack. Memet's grandmother helped the reclusive Elif organise the funeral and sent Memet round to keep Elif company. At other times his father went. Rumours began that she liked old men because when they died she could take advantage of the social services, etc. About half way through the story we learn that Memet is motherless. Elif becomes pregnant. She tells Memet that back in her village people thought she could cast spells. People said that her father had turned into a cockerel before she was born. Elif disappears. An ambulance had come because people had heard screams. She had a stillborn or a cockerel. She was deported. Memet tells a friend that the cockerel was his brother. The ending is "And then they went to look for bloodstains in the stairwell three blocks down, where a man was supposed to have been stabbed the night before". It was in "Best British Short Stories 2016"
• "Marginalia" - "You" read an old bestiary in a library. You love it because "the margins at last come to the centre ... the freaks have top billing". You notice another reader, a man. The two of you exchange glances. You follow him to the cafe, still wearing the gloves and hat with veil that you always wear. Later you see Susan, a librarian, being friendly with him. You trip, and Susan sees behind your veil that - to her surprise - there's nothing wrong with you.
• "Surf Scoter" - Vernon's mother Cathy had been a widow for nearly 9 months when he was born. It seems that his father had been sleeping around. From the age of 8 Vernon was obsessed with studying waterbirds. Later he was into punk. He got a job at a record shop. The owner said that Vernon's dad had liked the Ramones. He saves enough money to secretly fly to the States. He'd never flown before. He'd hardly travelled. He takes with him the 3 flying ducks on the wall. Later, a parcel is delivered to Cathy - parcels within stamped parcels from many countries with the ducks in the middle.
• "Maganda" - It starts with "Not every creature wearing human skin is a human being". When she was 8, Maganda's grandmother bought her a red dress at a London market. She died a few weeks later. Maganda wasn't allowed to the funeral. Her mother thought Maganda ugly and hairy. 21 years later she attended her mother's funeral organised by her mother's Filipino friends. She wears red. There's a karaoke at the wake. She walks out, ends up on Hackney Marshes at night. She recalls her grandmother's stories where "women always turned into something else". She sees her mother and grandmother together, like a 4-legged beast. Nature comes alive. The beast fades. She walks home.
• "Freak show" - The narrator (21 year old fat girl) visits the travelling funfair with friend Tommy 9about to do a Masters in psychology). There are many romany fortune tellers. He says she has identity issues and over-identifies with her romany ancestors. She thinks "this is how I imagine the Freak Show, a hall of mirrors. Except it's not a hall, it's a bare room ... with one plain mirror, full-length, that doesn't distort at all." She puts a romany potion in his drink before he goes on a ride, and he dies (I think).
• "There's no place like home" - It begins with "Voyeurism is truly the last refuge of the mediocre and the dead. When I was alive ...". The narrator became a ghost in her 20s, stuck in her flat. The first 2 female occupier's were ok, but she didn't like Tomas. So she learns how to haunt. He thinks it's his late sister Irina and gets a Ouija board. He pays for a spiritualist. When she arrives, the narrator notices she's a previous occupier. Tomas and her become a pair and move out. I don't get the ending - is it just that time and space grow vague?
• "Signs of the last days" - Miri, a loner from a strict religious family, is a classmate of the (13ish?) narrator. They walk to a cemetary after school. The girls get Miri to put lipstick on. She kneels at a war memorial and writes a bible quote on it with lipstick. They attack her. It rains. They don't see her at school for a while. After the summer holidays, all at a bigger school, they hear that she's become a rebel.
• "On Skar and matters pertaining" - A Borgesian academic article about some small Scottish islands, isolated to aviod cultural contamination. Many men die from bravado or nautical incompetance, their bodies not found. Recently, objects have been washed up. It's speculated that might be a twin planet where the bodies go and whence the objects come.
• "Adverse camber" - Only 3.5 pages - much the shortest piece in the book. The narrator is driving at night on an empty country road. Dials are broken. Black birds swoop past. Someone's in the back - a stranger? Neither knows where they're going.
• "The weather in Kansas" - It begins with "The world came to an end on a Thursday but there was still more waiting. It was a bit lonely at first". Then David, a suicide, returns. They're in Cumbria, isolated. He runs a cafe, she lives in a cottage where a poet used to live. She's reminded of a film where a house is blown to a new world, except that the narrator's still in the old world. 12 motorbikers arrive for breakfast on their way to the coast, like most people. After they leave, she listens to the sheep.

Slightly too many ghosts for my tastes, but much to like. Even the stories I don't care too much for have interesting details - e.g. the contents of the Freak Show in "Freak Show".

There's an interview online.

Other reviews

• Phil Clement (neat and well-observed fictions that evoke more than a flicker of the uncanny, conjuring a world in which all stories are true, somewhere ... Later, (and perhaps most enjoyably) in ‘On Skar and Matters Pertaining’)
• goodreads