Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)

No.

I reject this book.

I reject the short story form Ishiguro decided to use. I reject the admission of any of the characters to the Syd Barrett Memorial Room. And I most certainly reject the assumption Ishiguro made that just because he feels he is past his prime as a writer he can churn out any old thing and we won't profess ourselves disappointed.

I have waited a few days to post this, as I needed time for the book to simmer in my subconsciousness for awhile. I knew I was disappointed with the collection when I ventured to compare it to his other works. But, if I took this as a new author, someone I had no preconceived notions of, what would I think then?

I would think that it was as boring as watching a game of darts being played in a pub where the only thing on tap is lemonade. Slow-burning is one thing and then there's wrapping a potato in foil, sticking it on the ground in the English sun and waiting for it to cook. If this were the only book of Ishiguro's I had read I would never be tempted to pick up another of his books again.

The writing, inarguably, was beautiful. But there was no soul behind it. Ishiguro tried to tap into the depressing and selfish psyche of the struggling musical artist, but this exploration felt forced and insubstantial.

This is, I suppose, an obstacle that a writer must overcome when writing short stories. With a limited space to foster the reader's connection to both plot and characters every sentence needs to resonate with everything the author wants to say. The best short stories I have read seem to be bursting at their seams, DYING to say more and pummelling the bars of the cage that is the short story format. With these stories, Ishiguro almost seemed to have structured them in this way because he didn't have enough material to turn this into a novel.

I think Ishiguro is a highly intelligent, lyrical and lovely writer. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted from reading Nocturnes because Tom and Jerry were gallivanting on the television. So I choose to just pretend I never read this book and wait with eager anticipation for his next.

Rating 6/10.

Anthropology and a Hundred Other Stories (Dan Rhodes)

My day was highly enjoyable. I made my way to Chalk Farm and walked the five minutes to Primrose Hill under a sky that was depressingly overcast, even for England. I had a coffee at the patisserie there, which was, actually, quite disgusting. (You can see how good the rest of my day must have been if this is how it started).

I then made my way to Primrose Hill Books. This is the only bookshop to rival Hatchards in London I believe. And it is TINY. Ridiculously small. But the stock is chosen with a great deal of care and attention and it shows. There is not really any crap in there at all. And because of their lack of space, the staff are forced to pile all the books on top of each other. Unless you are committed to digging into piles, you'll miss most of the titles.

Genius.

Then I had lunch in the awesome Russian tea house there (the latkes are sublime) and a simply gorgeous elderly man leant across from the next table and struck up a conversation with me about Nick Hornby (I was finishing off Juliet,Naked). He turned out to be a very esoteric and surreal conversationalist so that was highly enjoyable. The dialogue swooped from Hornby to Pepys to apple crumble with alarming speed and before I knew it we had nudged our tables together and were sharing a pot of honey tea. I would feel chuffed that I had made a new friend, but it was so exhausting I don't know if I shall instigate any further correspondence.

One of the books I purchased was Dan Rhodes' Anthropology. It is a selection of 101 extremely short stories (each only about a paragraph long) and it is a very funny, (if bittersweet and slightly twisted) comment on love. In Rhodes' stories the women hold all the power and the poor, hapless man in each story is moved to great joy or despair depending on the seemingly vacuous whims of the fairer sex.

My two favourite stories are 'Sailing' and 'Words' and I will risk copyright infringement to share them with you here:

Sailing

My girlfriend cannot play the guitar. She strums slowly, erratically and woefully out of time. She sucks her lips in concentration, and sometimes stalls for as many as fifteen seconds between chord changes. When she stops playing, her eyes are bright with anticipation. 'OK. What was that?'

'I'm not sure. Was it "Moon River"?'

'No.' She looks disappointed. 'It was "We Are Sailing". You know, by Paul McCartney.' She starts another, and I know I won't be able to identify it, no matter how hard I try. This has been going on for seven perfect years. I hope she never learns.

Words

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled.

'I'm really not that thirsty.'

'What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling.

'I'm really not that thirsty.'

'What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say.

Rating: 8/10.

Fine Just The Way It Is (Annie Proulx)

Annie Proulx makes horrendous people, places and events FINE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE. This is her process, her tool, her particular brand of magic, and I never would have spotted it if she hadn't named her last collection of short stories just that.

Admittedly, I have a warped view of what is horrendous. To me, bad coffee is insufferable. Having lunch with someone and not getting the good seat (against the wall) is intolerable. Living without my hair straightener is INCONCEIVABLE. So naturally, I find these stories of poor and broken people in Wyoming cruel beyond all mortal comprehension, because I'm high maintenance and disgustingly entitled in my outlook on life.

Yet still, I rooted for them. I was happy for them, devastated for them. These, the people described as ugly, poor, unlovable, selfish, racist, stupid... utterly pedestrian. Proulx does not bother to take the easy route and write stories about the innocent, the intelligent, the fair and good. Any person would prove to be interesting under scrutiny. Worthy of our time, our eyes, our $22.95. How then, do writers differentiate between those who are passed over and those who deserve their own worded spotlight?

They choose the beautiful, the well-structured, the desirable people to write about. And I'm not talking about the desirability a husband sees in a wife who has a saggy stomach and discontented attitude radiating from beneath a hairstyle long out of fashion and powdered at the roots. Or the girl with average looks and average brains being charmed by the boy whose speech is clogged with the unfortunate spittle that plagues the over-salivating.

Those are the people whose stories are harder to write and still generate empathy with the reader and thus they are so often the people without a strong literary presence. Which is stupid, because when a writer does bother to create a character who is hard to like and rough around the edges it normally becomes as artful as Don Quixote, the book an ode to imperfection, beautiful through the simple fact of its existence.

That's what Annie Proulx does and then she goes one step further. She neglects to include any action whatsoever in her stories. Each event is constructed as a past occurrence, mentioned in passing by one character or another. At any one time, nothing is really happening. Snippets of family mystery, suspense, skeletons are hinted at, but the writing quickly moves on, choosing to focus instead on a wife musing about her dinner plans. It takes a serious talent to keep us engaged through all this, yet we find ourselves also weighing up the beef and pork options. Because she's just that damn good.

I must apologise for the wordiness and general pretension of this review. I have been embroiled in a big fight with a large pile of torn newspaper and glue for two days trying to make an acceptable model of a dolphin for a Year 4 Art Show. Because I have about a teaspoon of artistic ability in my entire genetic makeup... this has been a trying, exhausting time. I felt the need to prove I could still string a sentence together, having failed spectacularly as a sculptor.

Rating: 9/10.

How We Are Hungry (Dave Eggers)

I don't often enjoy the concept of the short story in it's singular form. I recently read the short story written in 1973 by James Tiptree Jr.: The Women Men Don't See. Well-written, insightful and semi-plausible... until the aliens turn up. And I KNOW it's sci-fi and therefore I shouldn't be complaining, but in the form of a short story there is little scope already for development of plot and character; throwing aliens in at the end seems like a last ditch attempt to go out on a bang, with no regard for the fact that the rest of the story, whilst on a deserted island, is supernatural-free.

HOWEVER, the short story COLLECTION is another thing altogether. Reading an excellent collection of short stories (by the SAME AUTHOR, none of these awful compilations please) is much like listening to an album that has obviously been constructed with each song part of a larger story, everything flowing and melding perfectly.

This is what Dave Eggers offers us with his 2004 collection How We Are Hungry. Often the short story author will attempt to create synergy be setting all stories in the same town, or having the characters weave in and out of each story, or have an overly obvious theme like several people all dealing with the shock of an apocalypse-free reality after the year 2000. Eggers bypasses any such clumsy amalgamations and instead presents us with 15 stories which appear to share little at the outset. However, at least to me, reading the book it seemed obvious that Eggers had finished each story and moved with ease onto the next one... his thoughts flow with purpose throughout and I didn't feel in the least disjointed or unsatisfied, which is how I often feel when reading the short story.

Hope you all had a good Easter... I had a marvellous time away, made even more so by this exciting tidbit I picked up: WH Smith now apparently have a 'Misery Literature' section. I kid you not. I am SUPER excited to check it out and feel as though, considering our tastes run in that direction a lot of the time anyway, we should think about having a Mislit Feature. GLORIOUS!!

Rating: 8/10.