Catch up – Unfortunately I’ve not been able to keep up with a daily reading journal entry over the past couple of days. In fact reading has again had to take a temporary back seat as I’ve dealt with a couple of important non-bookish issues. Sigh! That said I have managed to catch up with my reading of the short stories offered up by Fifty-Two Stories. Friday was purposely designated ‘Fifty-Two Stories catch up day’ and so I had four short stories to read through.
The first story, Broken Star by Jennifer Haigh, centres around the visit of an outgoing aunt to a family farmstead. Elements of story are great i.e. the interaction of aunt and niece, but the whole resonance of it made it feel as though it were a story more suited to a female reader. For that reason I wasn’t overly enamoured with it.
Proximity by Diana Spechler was the second story I had to catch up on. An odd story this, about an insecure woman with bulimia who has an infatuation with a work colleague. Odd it may be (in my mind at least), but it’s also an incredibly powerful and engaging story; case in point: I threw up four times this afternoon, so the world looks fuzzy, as if I’m watching it from a glass-bottom boat.
Story number #3 was the legendary Ray Bradbury with a story called Ma Perkins Comes to Stay. I’ve got to admit that I had no idea who Ma Perkins was until I read this story. I soon Googled it though which gave a bit of context to the story. It was a story which ended up being really weird but really entertaining at the same time. Is that the sign of a master storyteller? I think it may well be.
The final story I needed to catch up on was The Drowned Woman by the brilliantly named Frances De Pontes Peebles. As it title would suggest the story centres around a drowned woman. The title also suggests that the story would be quite gruesome, but with a couple of exceptions it’s actually turns out to be quite warm and endearing.
Today – Still having to mop up the remainder of those aforementioned ‘issues’, I’ve only managed to tick off two short stories, but they were important ones because I’ve now finished working my way through Ox-Tales: Fire (Profile Books). The second to last story Long Time, No See by Lionel Shriver is one of the most unique of the collection in that rather than a standalone short story, this is a standalone chapter from a still to be published (maybe) novel.
Although the theme of the novel is fundamentally about terrorism, Shriver, in a special intro note, tells us that more than terrorism the novel is about the ‘mystery of charisma’. Bearing this in mind, Long Time, No See completely illustrates this theme, with a meeting between two men. One of the men, Toby Falconer, is known for his legendary charisma, much to the indignation of the other, Edgar Kellogg.
The charismatic element of the story is great, but to be honest Long Time, No See didn’t really work for me, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it just wasn’t my kind of story. Or perhaps presenting the chapter as a standalone took it out of context and made it seem a bit disjointed. Whatever the reason it didn’t quite click into place.
The final story in Ox-Tales: Fire is a doggy-flavoured one – Dog Days by Jeanette Winterson. And although the story’s a little too extraneously ‘arty’ for me in its presentation, I rather quite liked it. It’s warm, it’s touching and it’s a very thoughtful piece of fiction, so I’ll forgive Winterson for her overly artistic foray.
Ok that’s it for today. The onus now is very much on getting back to reading my current novel choice Triple Cross by Mark T. Sullivan (St. Martin’s Press), and making a start on the final Ox-Tales volume in the series, Water.
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