"Facing white" (Lemon Soap Press, 2007)

An anthology of M Phil work (mostly stories) from the Oscar Wilde Centre.

• Jacqueline with flowers (Janelle Andrew) - The narrator Stephen thinks back to 22 years before, when he was 11, his sister Evelyn was 5, when their mother (Elizabeth), striken with grief because of the death of the her father, took them to Paris. There she had an affair. Stephen's father phoned to say he was coming over. Stephen didn't pass the message to his mother. His father arrived during a meal when the lover was there. The father never realised that his wife had been unfaithful, but she knew that Stephen had deliberately kept the visit a surprise. From that moment he thinks her mother didn't love him. She died 2 years before. Stephen told her that he forgave them. The non-linearity of the narration (and the voice) add interest.
• Souffle (Laura Barnicoat) - Mickey, 36, dreams about food. He wakes at 5 one morning and makes his 3 kids the souffle he'd dreamed of. He takes them to school. Clare, an ex, calls, asking if he wanted to be on a radio show. She comes to interview him. We learn that he has a wife who works - he's a house-husband.
• Poems (Colette Connor) - I liked the details of the ekphrastic poems.
• Caterpillar (Simon Doyle) - The narrator's visiting her widowered father - an ex soldier now out of prison. We're able to piece together the story - she killed her mother and her father took the blame. She kills herself with his gun.
• Izulu (Bethany Morrison) - The male narrator meets a woman in Zimbabwe, waiting for the drought to end, falling in love. When it pours, the air is full of flying ants. They go out and are surrounded by them.
• Vagabond rock (Gina Moxley) - The narrator, 51, recalls how 40 years before, their mother, a widow for 1.5 years, had begun dating and teaching her to drive. Brother Benny, 9, hated the babysitter. When her mother was out and the babysitter was asleep, the narrator sneaked out for a drive. Next morning the adults say there was a hit-and-run. The narrator knows that Benny saw her take the car out.
• Twenty-seven (Ainin Ni Bhroin) - Madelaine is Dr Shaw's patient. She thinks he loves her. he suggests that she tries another therapist instead of him. She goes home and starts cutting herself again. She goes to the doctor's surgery intending to kill him with a pair of scissors, but doesn't.
• Giving up (Orla Ni Chuilleanain) - The narrator's dying in an Irish hospice. She's a widow. Roison (her daughter, 41) visits each day. Martha, the narrator's friend, is visiting today, from England. We learn that the narrator adopted Roison (Martha's biological daughter) from birth and still doesn't want Roison to be told. This upsets Martha, who only sees Roison twice a year. Roison pops in. She's a mother.
• Poems (Kathryn Peters) - Not for me
• Cords (Elske Rahill) - The grandfather of Hannah (18) is dying after a stroke. She watches her grandmother care for him and wonders about the nature of love. Her brother Stephen, 16, arrives - "He would enter a church in the same way he'd walk into a meadow, or onto the stage ... He'd face our grandfather and grin and say, 'Hi.'".
  4 years later she's visiting Stephen in hospital after his 5th suicide attempt. He's angry. She's 8 months pregnant. She talks to another, older, mother whose son is there for the same reason as Stephen is. She says she doesn't love her son. She gives Hannah 20 euros so she can get home.
• The sea wall (Ross Skelton) - 1946. An extract. Ex-RAF Samuel has a desk job now that he doesn't like, and his wife Anne hasn't been too friendly to him since the war. He wants to be a poet. A tramp he knows, Donny, pops in. He's a poet. He stays the night. Next day they walk off together. Donny convinces Samuel to turn back.
• Uncle's story (Victoria Sprow) - Ruby, in Dublin, hears via her mother that uncle Robert has died in New Jersey. The priest got angry walking to the cemetery. The night of the funeral she recalls a moment when her father couldn't decide what tie to wear to a neighbour's party.
• A moment before ghosts (Rebecca Thomas) - Several typos (at least I think they're typos - are phrases like "to match go with her hat" and "strangenice" deliberate?). The narrator finds a photo of her and sister Natalia on a beach with their Croatian mother. She recalls the times they went there in Brittany. We jump ahead to when Natalia's getting married. She thinks about the games she played with Natalia, now their mother's foreigness might have influenced them. I like the way the piece goes to and fro through time.
• The family connection (Jamie Walsh) - 1959. Frank is driving with son Jim to the house where Frank grew up. Willie (Frank's brother - a widower) still lives there. Sean died not long before. The men talk away from Jim - "he senses that he is witnessing the result of all that has been said in the years his father lived in this house and all that went unsaid after he had gone". Frank says he wants to marry Mary Slattery, who's back in the area. He understands why the family might not like that.
  We jump ahead to when Jim is 60, married with a son. He and Willie lost contact. He is going to buy Willie's house and move there - "That was where he was from". There are some hints that he's Sean's son.

Many stories deal with the past (often comprising 2 episodes - then and now), going through events again hoping to understand. Lots of death. My favourite piece is Elske Rahill's "Cords"