I guess when it comes to short stories you just have to make a commitment to read them. Either you (and by 'you' that really means 'me') choose to pick a random story (like the weekly New Yorker short story that I used to be so very good at reading when my issue came in the mail) or you make your way steadily through a collection. I think I have started at least three and maybe even four story collections this year. That is not counting any annuals or anthologies that I am wooed into buying like the marvelous Freeman's (a new issue is due out very soon by the way), which also populate my night stand. All (well, save one which I will get to) sit partially read and almost abandoned. So, I hereby state, for the remaining quarter of the year that is left, I am going to make a concerted effort to get back on track with my short story reading.
First, the John Burnside collection, Something Like Happy. He is an amazing writer, and I knew it the instant I picked up the book (last December!) that he would rival William Trevor in his storytelling skills. For me William Trevor ranks up there with Alice Munro and Daphne du Maurier as masters of the short story. I will read any of their stories (and will happily read more by all of them). I'm thrilled to add Scottish writer Burnside to the list. He is a poet, and maybe he considers himself a poet before a short story writer, but it seems that poets have some particular special talent of seeing 'underneath' and 'inside', seeing the things most of us don't, or if we do, being able to articulate those truths in subtle and amazing ways. Not being a writer myself I can only imagine, but I think it surely must be harder to tell a good story in a few pages rather than hundreds.
Over the weekend I read two of Burnside's stories, am starting the next and plan on going back and rereading the first two that I read at the beginning of the year. But I will just tell you a little about the story "Peach Melba". I love stories that make you feel, that give you a sense of knowing something even if the story the author is telling is completely foreign--unknown people and places or things I cannot imagine doing. But being able to tell a story in a way that makes the reader feel a familiarity or understanding is a real talent. And I love a sense of longing and nostalgia that some writers can evoke, which Burnside does well.
"I have forgotten most of my life so far. This surprises me, sometimes, because I have enjoyed it so much: enjoyed it all, or most of it, enjoyed the summer days here in my tiny garden by the sea, enjoyed the oddly quiet companionship, by marriage, enjoyed--quietly, es, and with a more or less deliberate economy--the coming of winter, the taste of snow on the air when I walk into the village, and the strangely exotic tree--dark, and very still, with a hint of distance, a faint, almost imperceptible rumor of tundra about it--that the Rotary Club raises every year on the little green outside the church."
The narrator is a widower who is looking back over an event in his life, a moment he recalls because of a taste, an aroma, the day that the mother of childhood acquaintances made him peach Melba. It was one of those moments that was attached to an epiphany, a realization of the person he really was and who he would become. Ever after when he tried to make another perfect peach Melba, what he was looking for wasn't the taste so much as "the repetition of a moment". For me it is the smell of freshly cut grass in the heat of the early morning summer sunshine that brings back childhood memories. When it happens I am immediately and vividly drawn back to my own childhood.
What I especially love about this story is that the narrator discovers things about himself, the person he really is, inside. I see many of those qualities in myself, that desire for quiet and solitude and introspection, so this story resonated with my own life at this moment in time. If you have the opportunity to read John Burnside, please take it. If you come across his work, and especially this story, read it. His writing truly has a magical quality to it.
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I have finished reading Australian author, Tegan Bennett Daylight's collection of ten stories, Six Bedrooms. My first finished collection of the year, but hopefully not my only or last. Australian books tend to be rather pricey and harder to come by, at least contemporary works that do not have an international following (like Liane Moriarty's books for example). Six Bedrooms was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2016 (and I think it is cool that short story collections do make award lists sometimes), which is how I came across her writing and was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of the book from my library. It's well worth reading if you can get your hands on a copy.
The book blurb on back cover reads in part "Daylight's powerful collection captures the dangerous, tilting terrain of becoming adult." These stories read quite differently than those of Burnside, but there is definitely a similar nostalgia and thematically they are looking back at youthful experiences. In this case, however, Daylight often looks at the seamier, darker and more awkward side of being a young girl/woman growing up in the last few decades. These are the moments you recall with a shudder or grimace. They are more raw but no less true or relatable.
Since it is freshest in my mind having just read it over the weekend, let me tell you a little bit about "J'aime Rose". This is such a typical situation when it comes to relationships-and maybe not even young relationships or first romances. Why is it that it's the brother of a best male friend who is more attractive? Rose has had a longstanding friendship with Ben, but it's his stepbrother who will ruin their friendship.
"He was quiet and even shy, but in fact he was clever, fierce and defiant, and he cared nothing for what other kids thought. He was the most entertaining friend I had. He was the only boy I knew who laughed when things were funny, rather than when they were meant to be funny, or when everyone else was laughing."
High school comes along and Ben is much the same but but his once smooth, pretty face is acne-filled and he forgets to wash his hair as often as he should. In other words, he is a typical teenager. But he is ready to take their relationship from mere friends to an admission to their peers that they are a couple. Rose is hesitant, but she gives in only to find she likes his new stepbrother more than Ben. And as young girls so often do, she makes a bad choice, though at the time it doesn't feel bad. Kids, teenagers, they can be pretty cruel at times. This is where the shudders and grimaces come in. It is only when a person doesn't learn from their mistakes . . . but then that is reality, too, sometimes.
I would be interested to read more of Bennett Daylight's work and hope to get my hands on a novel she published a number of years back. I'll have to do a wrap up of all my Australian reading this summer. I read a lot of good books and have a number of new finds to share.