Three single-author short story collections

With my own short story collection scheduled for November next year, I thought I should give more blog space to the short story. But although I managed to pick the winner of the BBC short story award, the first two of these collections knocked my confidence in my ability to review the short form. Listed in the order I read them, the third has me fizzing with excitement about what the short story can achieve. See what you think!

You Should Come With Me Now by M John Harrison

Weird, very weird! So weird that I couldn’t figure out whether or not I liked this collection of short fiction from “cartographer of the liminal” M John Harrison. Let’s say that I read about half the book in one evening, expecting to finish in time to post my review for publication day (since the kind people at Comma Press had sent me a prepublication copy), but managed the rest only in intervals between reading more conventional fiction. Which might be the best way to savour these affectless thought experiments. While witty and inventive, the cumulative effect is enervating, leaving lots of unanswered questions along the lines of who, what, why, where, when and how. Aficionados of the surreal might have more to say about them, so I was grateful to come across Ursula Le Guin’s review in the Guardian, without which I might not have been able to cobble together even this apology for a review. I doubt I’m the author’s intended reader, as even the short story that worked for her made little impression on me. But looking this up did take me back to the collections subtitle, Stories of Ghosts, which seems an appropriate descriptor although in this case, unlike the conventional ghost story, the “real characters” are as shadowy as the ghosts.

Sugar, Sugar by Lainy Malkani

How did sugar production survive in the Caribbean when the African slaves were emancipated (and the slave owners, rather than the slaves, compensated for their loss)? By shipping in indentured labourers from India, including the forebears of London-born writer and broadcaster, Lainy Malkani. Growing up hearing stories of the very different life of her ancestors, she set up the Social History Hub to enable ordinary people to share their memories. This short story collection is the offshoot.

Most of the stories have a contemporary (or recent past) setting focusing on middle-class Londoners brushing against their past. But it felt as if the author had pushed the most interesting nuggets of history to where they’d have the least impact: for example, the report of an elderly uncle claiming to have pulled oxen to the sugar factory in Trinidad as a boy; or the practice of immigration officers changing names to ones they can more easily pronounce conveyed through a conversation between people who weren’t there at the time. It could be because I don’t share her heritage that I didn’t find these stories particularly engaging. Or it could be that fiction isn’t the best medium for her talents. I’m left feeling that more artistic license might have enlivened this important part of my country’s history. Thanks to HopeRoad for my review copy.

Come Let Us Sing Anyway by Leone Ross

Mrs Neecy Brown’s husband is falling in love. She can tell, because the love is stuck to the walls of the house, making the wallpaper sticky, and it has seeped into the calendar in her kitchen, so bad she can’t see what the date is, and the love keeps ruining the food …
 
What an opening to acclaimed author Leone Ross’s diverse, lively and witty collection of short stories, crafted over fifteen years! From the weirdness of headless schoolgirls and talking food to sex to the anger of black lives taken as if they didn’t matter to the poignancy of a young Jamaican girl sent to live with an uncle she’s never met and knows very little about. This latter story, “President Daisy”, was one of my favourites – along with the opening “Love Silk Food” about the stoicism of a grandmother whose husband reserves his love for the excitement girls – heartwarming, without being in the least schmaltzy with a surprise ending about what love really means. With a flair for language to match her vibrant imagination, this collection sings loud and strong. I sincerely hope this won’t be the last of this author’s fiction I read. Thanks to Peepal Tree Press for my review copy, my first from this small press specialising in Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry, literary criticism, memoirs and historical studies.