*Bounce* *Bounce* *Bounce* *Bounce* *Bounce* Why am I bouncing? Because I’m excited. Why am I excited? Because sitting in front of me is Irish short fiction legend Kevin Barry’s latest short story collection, Dark Lies the Island (Jonathan Cape), and methinks that’s reason enough to be banging my head on the ceiling.

Regulars of RobAroundBooks and my ‘followers’ on Twitter will of course know how much I bang on about Kevin Barry, so you’ll all know the reason for my restless excitement. But for the rest of you here’s a quick history:

I first came across Kevin Barry during the summer of 2010 when I set about reading something of his 2007 debut collection, There Are Little Kingdoms (Stinging Fly Press), in preparation for an event he was attending at EdBookFest, with Simon Van Booy. Having never read Barry up to that point, I’ll admit that I was mainly going to that event for Van Booy, but it turned out that the event was made 100% better by the presence of Kevin Barry.

Van Booy captivated me in that event as I thought he would, but the moment I heard Barry read I knew there was something special about him. He electrified the audience with an energetic and colourful reading and it was clear that he lives for telling stories. You can read my report on that 2010 event HERE)

I’ve since seen Barry perform two more times since that 2010 event, and both times he’s held me with the same grip; holding me on the spot with the power of his storytelling. Kevin Barry is theatrical and passionate, and he was born to perform.

Of course we’re not really interested here in Barry’s performance on the stage, are we? As good as his eventing may be we’re far more concerned with talking about short stories. However, I believe that both are intrinsically linked. How can one bring a story so colourfully to life in real life if the story itself is grey and bland? Impossible of course, and since immersing myself in his short fiction I’ve come to realise that Barry’s stories are as enriched and as colourful as the man himself. His stories always read as though they are being performed – with pace and with rhythm – and truth be told I’ve yet to come across a bad one. I won’t bore you with the details though, just head on over and read my afterthoughts on There are Little Kingdoms, where you’ll find many of my opinions on the short stories of Kevin Barry.

Now, are you beginning to see why I might be just a little excited about Kevin Barry’s latest short story collection? *grins* Before I go on and bounce some more though, I’d like to share the cover blurb for Dark Lies the Island:

A kiss that just won’t happen. A disco at the end of the world. A teenage goth on a terror mission. And OAP kiddie-snatchers, and Scouse real-ale enthusiasts, and occult weirdness in the backwoods…

Dark Lies the Island is a collection of unpredictable stories about love and cruelty, crimes, desperation, and hope from the man Irvine Welsh has described as ‘the most arresting and original writer to emerge from these islands in years’. Every page is shot through with the riotous humour, sympathy and blistering language that mark Kevin Barry as a pure entertainer and a unique teller of tales.

That’s the blurb for Dark Lies the Island and I’ll say that I found nothing surprising in that. Barry’s stories are eclectic to say the least, and he populates them with the most intriguing of marginal characters (usually Irish), and in the most glorious of settings (usually Ireland). He’s a master of humour and of dialogue, and of place and of character, and it seems to me that this collection is more of the same, which is absolutely no bad thing.

As excited as I am, I’ve got admit that I’m also somewhat anxious heading in to Dark Lies the Island, because I’m worried that I may have set my expectations too high. That said, I’m somewhat calmed knowing that Barry’s Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award winning story Beer Trip to Llandudno is included (you can read my review of that story HERE), because I already know what a spectacular story this is, and if the other 12 stories in the collection only measure up to being half as good then I know I’m not going to be disappointed.

Normally in a forethoughts post this is the point when I’d tell you something about the author, but as I’ve already written a ton of stuff about Kevin Barry on RobAroundBooks already, I should probably point you to that. Perhaps the best place to head over to first is my forethoughts post for There Are Little Kingdoms, where there’s a short bio on Barry, and a handful of related links. You may also like to check in on my EdBookFest diary entries from last year (HERE and HERE) where I talk manically about meeting the man (and his wife, as it happens ). More recently, Barry of course won the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, and HERE I discuss Barry’s potential for wining the prize. Finally, the morning after the night before, and HERE the Booktrust’s Nikesh Shukla interviews Kevin Barry on his most deserving win. Right, that should be enough to keep you busy for now.

So enough talking, it’s time to dive in to Dark Lies the Island, and let it be known that I intend to review the book in the same way that I review all short story collections/ anthologies ie. story-by-story before returning with my final afterthoughts on the collection as a whole. Below you will see the contents of Dark Lies the Island, and as I progress I’ll link to the individual reviews.

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:: Contents of Dark Lies the Island ::
(links lead to individual reviews of each story, when posted)

• Across the Rooftops
• Wifey Redux
• Fjord of Killary
• A Cruelty
• Beer Trip to Llandudno
• Ernestine and Kit
• The Mainland Campaign
• Wistful England
• Doctor Sot
• The Girls and the Dogs
• White Hitachi
• Dark Lies the Island
• Berlin Arkonaplatz – My Lesbian Summer

Jonathan Cape | 5th April 2012 | £12.99 | PAPERBACK | 199 PP | ISBN: 9780224090582

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

It’s not every day that I’ll leapfrog a new arrival to the top of my review pile (especially while I’m reading as a shadow judge for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), but then again it’s not every day that a new translated novel comes along from the hugely talented Italian author, Niccolò Ammaniti. Be warned, I may get a little overexcited in this forethoughts post .

Me and You (originally published in Italian under the title, Io e te) is the latest novel from Ammaniti to arrive in the UK, courtesy of the wonderful Canongate Books who have brought all of Ammaniti’s novels to the English language (I’m indebted to them ). It’s been three long years since the publication of his previous English translation, The Crossroads (you can read my rather sparkling 2009 review of it, HERE), and so a new publication from Ammaniti has been a long time in coming.

The first thing that I notice about Me and You is how thin it is. Two out of three of Niccolò Ammaniti’s previous novels have all weighed in at over 400 pages, yet this latest offering only amounts to a measly 160 pages. I’m not particularly concerned about this however, because I know that this author is capable of packing a very big punch into a small amount of space. He did so with one of my all-time contemporary favourites – I’m Not Scared, which itself is only slightly longer at 250 pages.

So I’m expecting a big punch from Me and You. partly because I know the kind of novel that Ammaniti writes, but also because the cover blurb suggests it:

Hiding out in his parents’ cellar, Lorenzo is about to discover what dark secrets lurk beneath the surface of his respectable Italian family.

Me and You is a compulsive and deeply affecting account of how an alliance between two outsiders blows open one family’s secrets.

Ammaniti’s latest masterpiece is a breathtaking tale of shame, acceptance and wanting to be loved.

Short and sweet the synopsis may be, but it’s also highly revealing. If you’ve read Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared then you will no doubt be reminded of it instantly. I’m Not Scared follows the story of a boy who discovers a shocking secret which changes his life forever. You and Me looks to be on a very similar theme. This no bad thing because Ammaniti is the master of ‘shocking discoveries’ and their affecting repercussions as he is with the coming-of-age/loss of innocence theme. So I’m delighted to discover that he’s sticking to this winning formula, and not going down a completely different, and perhaps less compelling route. I’m expecting You and Me to be as dank and as dark as the cellar I’m imagining, in which Lorenzo makes his discovery.

Speaking about Ammaniti at this time is like remembering a long lost friend. I was blown away by this writer early in 2009 when The Crossroads was published (I even got the opportunity to speak to him, albeit virtually), not least because in the time leading up to that novel’s publication I hungrily feasted on Ammaniti’s two other novels – Steal You Away, and the aforementioned I’m Not Scared. I consider this to have been one of the most incredible reading experiences I’ve had and mainly because Ammaniti’s writing excited me so much. His engaging storytelling is full of high drama and shock and it’s difficult to pull oneself away from the page. At that time I had found everything that I had been looking for in a contemporary translated author, and as a consequence he was added then to my list of all-time favourite writers, which is quite an achievement given that most of the writers on my all-time favourites list are classic authors.

After the Ammaniti reading frenzy I moved on, and I guess I forgot about him again. That is until a couple of weeks ago when I discovered, by chance, that Canongate were publishing this new Ammaniti translation. All the love and passion for the Italian literary maestro came rushing back to me instantly, and I sit here now with the book in front of me, barely able to compose this forethoughts post, because all I want to do is to read the book.

So I think you can see just how excited I am about reading Me and You, but I worry a little that I may from the outset be setting my expectations far too far. Thing is, I can’t help it. Ammaniti has never let me down with his storytelling so far, and I don’t expect him to now. There is however, a tiny niggle in my head.

It would be easy to say that it’s the novel’s short length that’s causing the niggle in my head, but I’ve already said that Ammaniti can pack a big punch in a small space, and I expect that punch to come in this novel. No, the niggle comes from noticing that Canongate (or is Ammaniti himself?) have employed the services of a new translator in Kylee Doust for this book. I should be quick to add that I’m not suggesting that Doust is in any way a bad translator (she’s hardly likely to be given that she’s not only studied Italian literature and linguistics at La Trobe Univbersity, Melbourne but she’s also lived in Italy since 1998), it’s just that all of Ammaniti’s previous novels have been translated by the hugely competent Jonathan Hunt, who’s translations I adore, and I fear that this change of translator will create a difference voice for Ammaniti, and that it’s going to be a voice that I don’t like.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course, and it would be very short-sighted of me to discount a novel just because of a change of translator. This isn’t something that I would ever do anyway – especially when it comes to Niccolò Ammaniti – and who knows, Doust might just makes Ammaniti sound even better. I’m hopeful.

Well, I’ve held off on reading Me and You for long enough while writing these forethoughts, and it’s time to get stuck in. I know via my fellow reviewing friend, Kimbofo that Me and You is not a long read (around a couple of hours), so aside from not interrupting my Independent Foreign Fiction reading too much, I should be back pretty sharpish to offer my final opinion on Ammaniti’s latest offering. And I promise you from the outset dear reader, that although I may be starstruck, my opinion is never blinded.

Meantime, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve read anything from Niccolò Ammaniti and been as equally affected. Please drop your comments below. Ciao for now.

Canongate Books | 2nd February 2012 | £10.00 | HARDBACK | 160 PP | ISBN: 9780857861979

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

And so I take a first tentative step into this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize as a ‘shadow judge’, by reading one of the shortest books on the longlist, Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz (Chatto & Windus; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange).

Given the international prominence of Amos Oz (he’s officially the most translated Israeli author), one would be forgiven for thinking that he has been on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist before, but this is in fact the first time that a work of his has been selected.

Despite being thrilled at the prospect of reading Scenes from Village Life, I do have slight reservations, but I’ll share these later. I’d like to open these forethoughts if I may, with a rundown on the cover blurb:

Amos Oz’s new fiction presents a surreal and unsettling portrait of a village in Israel. A picture of the community takes shape across seven stories, in which a group of characters appear and return. Every villager is searching for something, yet in this almost dreamlike world nothing is certain, nothing is resolved.

An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night. A stranger turns up at a man’s door, to persuade him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house. A man goes to his neighbours for regular evenings of music and old pioneer songs, but is overwhelmingly drawn to the tragic heart of the house.

Behind each episode is another, hidden story – a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence. The book concludes with an eighth story, shocking and strange, from another place and a distant time. In beautifully simple, poetic language, Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives in this powerful, hypnotic work.

Not surprisingly, given my love for short fiction, what appeals to me from the outset is the fact that Scenes From a Village is described as a series of eight interlocking short stories (Oz himself describes it as a ‘novel in stories’). It’s not the first time that such a format has found its way onto the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist (springing immediately to mind is Jenny Erpenbeck’s magnificent Visitation (Portobello Books), and Pietro Grossi’s testosterone-oozing Fists (Pushkin Press)), and generally I prefer these shorter works to the bigger tome-like novels which inevitably pop up every year (there are two significant doorstoppers on the longlist this year – Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (Harvill Secker) and Peter Nadas’ Parallel Stories (Jonathan Cape)), so I’ll always be more naturally drawn t works like this.

I must say however, that when adjectives such as ‘surreal’ and ‘dreamlike’ are used in a jacket synopsis, I become a little wary (and even more so when they’re linked to Amos Oz), because I often find that a book described as such, usually ends up being a little puzzling and abstract, at best. And of what I’ve picked up on the ‘grapevine’ so far, I’m led to believe that this work of fiction is a highly political one – as much of Oz’s work is – and quite frankly this scares me because I do find heavily political fiction to be something of a drag.

So going into Scenes from Village Life I guess I’m split between excitement and trepidation, which if I’m honest is the mood I normally find myself in when I’m about to begin a new book, especially from an author whose work I’ve never really read much of before. However it turns out I can only hope that Scenes from Village Life is exactly as its title suggests i.e. a novel in which village life is explored, in contemporary Israel. The blurb kind of hints at this, so fingers crossed.

So what of this titan writer from the Middle East? Well, Amos Oz was born Amos Klausner, in Jerusalem in 1939 (he changed his surname to Oz – meaning ‘strength’ – when he began publishing his books), to a family of scholars who had emigrated from Russia in the 1920s. He went on to study philosophy and literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, before serving as a reserve soldier (as most Israeli Jews do of course) with the Israeli Defense Forces. He has seen action both in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Married to his wife Nily since 1960, the couple have two daughters and a son, and have lived for the past 26 years in the small city of Arad, which is located on the edge of the Negev Desert, 69 miles south of Jerusalem.

Obsessively ordered in every respect (in his life, in his writing and in his appearance), Oz is a strong Zionist, and his beliefs on this are often reflected in his political writing. Oz is also recognised – by some more than others – as a dedicated peace activist. He is founder of the Peace Now organisation.

Regarded as one of Israel’s most prominent intellectuals, Oz has to date published 18 works of fiction, and over 450 articles and essays. He has also picked up a myriad of prestigious awards during his career, including the Prix Femina, the Prix Méditerranée Étranger (for this very novel), the Israel Prize and the Frankfurt Peace Prize.

All said and done, I think we can safely declare that Amos Oz is the ‘David Beckham’ of the Israeli literary scene (albeit with more intellect, and less flash ).

Nicholas de Lange is the eminent translator of Scenes from Village Life. A professor at the University of Cambridge, De Lange has not only translated many works from the Hebrew language – including those of Amos Oz – but has also himself published and edited several works on the subject of Judaism. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Hebrew-English Translation, for his work on Oz’s autobiographical novel, A Tale of Love and Darkness (Vintage). This gives me great hope that Scenes from Village Life has been rendered into English as perfectly as it can be (Oz declares Hebrew to be a language so poetic that it’s impossible to translated into another), and even more so when I think of how well Oz can speak English too.

That’s all I have to say for now so it’s on with the reading. As I’ve said above I’m really looking forward to this one, but I’m worried that it’s going to be a bit stuffy and/or abstract in its meaning. I’ll be back to let you know as soon as. Meantime, if you want to know more about Amos Oz, then check out the links below.

Chatto and Windus | 14th July 2011 | £12.00 | HARDBACK | 272 PP | ISBN: 9780701185503

Learn more about Amos Oz:

This book is being read as part of my involvement in 2012 with the ‘shadow jury’ for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. To find out more about this, and the judging panel that I’m involved with, please visit my ‘Shadowing the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize’ post.

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

I’ll begin by saying that this really is an exciting publication for lovers of Jon McGregor’s short fiction. The man is renowned for the short stories that he’s published in various places, but this is the first time that a Jon McGregor collection has been brought together. True, some of these collected stories have been published elsewhere, including the two excellent stories that put him on the BBC National Short Story Award stories – If It Keeps On Raining (shortlisted 2010) and Wires (shortlisted 2011) – but to the best of my knowledge most of the collection is original and previously unpublished. What theme is the collection on, if any? Let’s have a look at the cover blurb:

A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman’s windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant labourers sit by a lake, talking about shovels and sex, while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war.

These aren’t the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do.

Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just behind the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.

So that’s blurb, and I think it gives a good indication of what this collection is all about. Primarily, the theme seems to be about dramatic events affecting mundane and largely uneventful lives – the kind of events that people don’t imagine happening to them, as the blurb says . Don’t you just love it when normal everyday characters are going about their normal everyday routines when BANG, something happens, and the metaphorical apple cart spills all over the road? Very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

What interests me more though is the setting for all of the stories in This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You – the fenlands, that naturally marshy region to be found in eastern England. McGregor has said previously that ‘place’ is very important to him in his fiction (he talks about it during this video interview), and so I wonder why he has specifically chosen this area as a location for this collection of short stories? I won’t know for sure until I read the book of course, but at this stage I’m guessing it’s either something to do with the fenlands being largely featureless and bland, which would give McGregor more of a blank ‘stage’ on which to amplify dramatic events, or it may have something to do with the fragility of the area, which would compliment and accentuate the fragility of the people who find themselves in unusual circumstances in McGregor’s stories. Whatever the reason it’s an intriguing one, and I’ll be searching for clues while I’m reading.

So what about the man himself? Well, Jon McGregor was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk, and currently lives in Nottingham with his wife and two children. He’s had three novels published to date, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin and Even the Dogs (all published by Bloomsbury), with the first being longlisted for the Man Book Prize. McGregor’s debut novel also won him the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2003.

Given the level of McGregor’s literary successes thus far (although he always seem to just miss out on the top prizes), I find it remarkable that he hasn’t any formal academic qualifications in writing (he does hold a BSc in Media Technology & Production from the University of Bradford). No biggie because lots of writers don’t have formal qualifications in the craft, but I just find impressive for someone who writes so well to have had no formal training. He certainly gives hope to all those budding writers who don’t want to contemplate taking the university route.

So I guess that’s all I have to say about Jon McGregor and his new short story collection for now, and it’s on with the job of working my way through the 30 stories on offer. I’ll proceed as I always do, reading each story individually and reviewing it, before returning with my final afterthoughts on the collection as a whole. I made a pledge in my last short story collection forethoughts post that I would be dramatically speeding up my journey through these collections, and I aim to stick to that. So hopefully, it’ll only be a few days before I come back with my final review on This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You. I’m in for a thrilling journey I think, and you can keep up with my progress at any time by coming back to these forethoughts, and following the links that I will create below as I post a review of each story. Following the contents below, there are also some links which you may find useful if you want to find out more a little more about Jon McGregor.

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:: Contents of This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You ::
(links lead to individual reviews of each story, when posted)

• That Colour
• In Winter The Sky
• She Was Looking For This Coat
• Looking Up Vagina
• Keeping Watch Over The Sheep
• Airshow
• We Were Just Driving Around
• If It Keeps On Raining
• Fleeing Complexity
• Vessel
• Which Reminded Her, Later
• The Chicken And The Egg
• New York
• French Tea
• Close
• We Wave And Call
• Supplementary Notes To The Testimony
• Thoughtful
• The Singing
• Wires
• What Happened To Mr Davison
• Years Of This, Now
• The Remains
• The Cleaning
• The Last Ditch
• Dig A Hole
• I Remember There Was A Hill
• Song
• I’LL Buy You A Shovel
• Memorial Stone

Bloomsbury | 02 February 2012 | £14.99 | HARDBACK | 272 PP | ISBN: 9781408809266

Find out more about Jon McGregor:

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

First off, why am I so excited about reading this particular collection from debut author, Macleod? Well, mainly because I’ve heard so many good things about it. Light Lifting may be new to the UK, but in Canada where where this author hails from, Light Lifting has been on bookshop shelves since September 2010 (HERE’S a video from the launch), and since then it has created quite a stir around literary circles. Not only was Light Lifting shortlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize the day after its publication, but last year it was also shortlisted for the prestigious Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The collection also took the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award at last year’s Atlantic Book Awards, while also standing a finalist in the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Even ignoring all of the glowing literary reviews – and of these there are many – this collection has built up a lot of prestige over the past year, and I don’t think there are too many short story fans out there who wouldn’t be excited (or at the very least intrigued), to read this one.

Let’s go look at the cover blurb:

Light Lifting, Alexander Macleod’s long-awaited first collection of short fiction, offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies. These are elemental stories of work and its bonds, of tragedy and tragedy barely averted, but also of beauty, love and fragile understanding.

That’s the blurb – short and sweet but suitably intriguing I think. The mention of the stories being ‘elemental’ and themed around ‘tragedy’ and ‘work and its bonds’ is particularly interesting, especially when juxtaposed against ‘beauty’ and ‘love’, because it sounds as though these may well be the kinds of story that one can’t quite get out of the head once finished. I’m a huge fan of ‘stick in the head’ tales, and I remember reading somewhere (I can’t remember where exactly – probably because my brain is full of ‘stick in the head’ tales ) that all of the stories in this collection are wholly memorable, and in a truthful, biting, gritty kind of way. And that’s absolutely my cup of tea.

And if that wasn’t encouragement enough for me, the great Irish novelist Colm Tóibín declares that the stories in this collection ‘offer a real pleasure which comes from the sense of life and emotional honesty in them’ which really piques interest, especially when factoring in Anne Enright’s comment that Alexander MacLeod illuminates every page of this collection, with his ‘belief in people and the power of story’. Marketing blurb I know, but marketing blurb that comes from two literary giants.

What is perhaps espcially interesting about Light Lifting however, is that it’s a culmination of over 15 years of work. This is not to say that it has taken MacLeod fifteen years to write the collection from start to finish, rather the stories in it span 15 years of writing. I think it’s safe to suggest therefore, that there’s nothing unconsidered or last minute about the seven stories included in this collection, and that Macleod has had plenty of time to put a spit and polish on every one of them.

So what of Alexander MacLeod himself? Well, for starters he comes from good literary stock. His father is the noted short story writer and novelist, Alistair MacLeod, who amongst other things won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2001 for his 1999 novel, No Great Mischief.

Alexander himself was born in Inverness, Cape Breton and raised in Windsor, Ontario. He holds degrees from University of Windsor, the University of Notre Dame, and McGill. He is married with three young children and is currently an associate professor of English at St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. This is clearly a man who eat, sleeps and drinks literature, and he has done so for a long time.

Additionally, MacLeod used to be a serious distance runner and I know one of his stories – the first, Miracle Mile which I’ve had a sneak read of already (Wow, but more on that later) – is about the life of the competitive distance runner. Macleod admits that there are elements of himself in all of his stories, so I’m expecting this collection to be as intriguing in an autobiographical sense as it is in a fictional. Given the time span during which the stories have been created I’m looking forward to seeking out the signs of Macleod blossoming, both as a person and as a writer.

So Light Lifting really does look to have the makings of one extraordinary short story collection (the cover is basic and unassuming too which is always a promising thing i.e. it doesn’t need bells and whistles to sell it), hence my thrill at the thought of reading it. The fact that the collection has gained so much recognition before coming to the UK is exciting enough, but adding in all of the other things – MacLeod’s ancestry, his love for literature, the timespan covering the creation of these stories, the comments from prominent authors etc. – I don’t think I’ve been as eager to dive into a short story collection for a long time (I lie because I get excited over most short story collections, but I’m doing so for dramatic effect ).

So, how am I going to proceed with my reading of Light Lifting? Well, the same way as I always do with short story collections/anthologies i.e. read and review each individual story before returning with a final afterthoughts post for the collection as a whole. I’m noted for being rather leisurely when it comes to the speed in which I read short story collections, but this is something I really want and need to improve on. So rather than posting my final afterthoughts on this collection in a few weeks time, I hope to return in a few days to let you know how I got on. Meantime, you track my progress through this collection, below. Oh and and if you want to know little more about Alexander MacLeod, then scroll past the contents list for Light Lifting, where there’s a few links that will hopefully enlighten you.

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:: Contents of Light Lifting ::
(links lead to individual reviews of each story, when posted)

• Miracle Mile
• Wonder About Parents
• Light Lifting
• Adult Beginner I
• The Loop
• Good Kids
• The Number Three

Jonathan Cape | 02 February 2012 | £15.99 | HARDBACK | 211 PP | ISBN: 9780224093941

Find out more about Alexander MacLeod:

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

Even before I begin reading Accabadora by Michela Murgia (MacLehose Press; translated by Silvester Mazzarella), I know I hold something special in my hand. In its native Italy, the novel has won six – count them: 1,2,3,4,5,6 – literary awards (including the prestigious Campiello Prize), so to ignore a book with such glowing accolades would be idiotic (people do though, as lovers of translated fiction know fine well). Actually, given that it has such a striking cover (designed by Monica Reyes. She seems to have used a simple patterned fabric but to great effect), Accabadora is impossible to ignore even without knowing that it’s a multiple prize winner. This is one which will definitely stand out on the bookshop shelves, you can be sure of that.

Let’s move on then to look at the cover blurb, which may, as we all know, contain mild spoilers:

When the once-beautiful Bonaria Urrai adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an accabadora, an angel of mercy, who acts as a midwife to the dying. The rural community fear and revere her in equal measure, but they understand that just as only a woman can bring life into the world, only a woman should take it away.

Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent, and in the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects Tzia Bonaria and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in the big city, she strives to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of family ties that have nothing to do with blood, and of a destiny that must one day be hers.

A powerful and yet delicate novel set in the 1950s rural Sardinia, written in a rich, limpid prose that perfectly captures the hidden ties between life, love and death.

First impressions based on the blurb? Powerful stuff, about a girl who is obviously troubled deep down. The big part that ‘family’ seems to play in Accabadora (as with many Italian novels) is intriguing. We all know how deep running family feuds can get, and I’ve a feeling that this one might well get right down to the core, especially when taking the mother’s ‘profession’ into consideration. If the family feud does reach the depths I expect it to, then Accabadora is, I think, going be one heck of a ‘rollercoaster’ novel.

Know what else I love the sound of? That this novel is set in a rural location in 1950s Sardinia. I know little of the history of the island during this period, so it’ll be nice to find out a little more. The fact that the novel is also partly set in the bustling city of Turin is of further interest. Aside from offering a striking contrast to rural Sardinia, it’ll hopefully teach me something about 1950s Turin too, because I know nothing about that either (and who says that fiction doesn’t educate, eh? ).

Of course most interesting of all is this theme of the accabadora. Apparently, these traditional ‘angels of death’ actually existed on the island of Sardinia up to as late as the 1970s, and they were brutal in their profession (Judith Schalansky missed a trick here, didn’t she?). The aged accabadora would enter the home of somebody dying – swathed in black; face covered – and clinically dispatch the poor person, not only with precision but more often than not using a cudgel, specially crafted from a tree branch. Wonder what these things may look like? Then wonder no more, because for your delight and delectation ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been able to track down a video (in Italian, sorry) which shows this tool of the accabadora (from about the 1min mark), in all of its gruesome glory (thanks to Andrew Collins):

As for the author, Michela Murgia, well this is my first time reading her – perhaps not surprising given that this is her debut in English – and I know surprisingly little about her aside from knowing that she was born in Cabras, Sardinia in 1972 and that she has worked as a religious studies teacher, a timeshare saleswoman and an administrator in a power plant. However, the fact that she has come along with a novel which has picked up six literary awards in Italy, speaks volumes. There must be something hugely competent about her, and I look forward to finding out exactly what, for myself.

The translator, Silvester Mazzarella is also new to me. The Canterbury-based multilingual translator seems more than up to the task however, having learned English from his mother, Italian from his father, and Swedish while teaching at the University of Helsinki. I look forward to tasting the fruits of his labour, so to speak.

So for now that’s all I can say I guess, and I’m left to the task of diving in to Accabadora. Weighing in at just a little over 200 pages it shouldn’t take me too long to tick this one off. So I should be back real soon – certainly before the book’s official publication date of October 27th – to let you know what I thought of it. For now stay safe, and be wary of any old ladies dressed in black who may come a-knockin’ on your door .

MacLehose Press | 27th October 2011 | £12.00 | HARDBACK | 208 PP | ISBN: 9780857050458

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

I’ll begin by briefly explaining what the Bristol Short Story Prize is all about. Founded by the Bristol Review of Books and operating as a non-profit organisation under the guidance of the brilliant Joe Melia (brilliant because Joe’s passion for short stories is undying), the Bristol Short Story Prize is an annual prize which awards the best short story submissions as judged by an expert panel. The winner, along with two runners-up and seventeen other shortlisted stories, are given a small cash prize and awarded with publication in the yearly anthology. There is an onus on promoting previously unpublished writers, but the main aim of the Bristol Short Story Prize is in promoting the short story form in general, which is something much required in the UK, as fans of the form in this country will know.

That’s the Bristol Short Story Prize in a nutshell but what of this latest anthology, No. 4? Well, I’ll begin with the cover blurb:

Original, exciting and innovative writing abounds in this collection of 20 irresistible short stories. Selected from more than 2,000 entries for the 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize, here are 20 superb writers illustrating not only their own talents but, also, the vast spectacle of the short story.

Mmmm…‘the vast spectacle of the short story’, I like that phrase, and it’s oh so true. The short story is infinite in theme and it’s certainly a spectacle to behold. And that’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about previous BSSP anthologies, the selection has certainly always been wide-ranging with each of the stories standing as a real spectacle in its own right.

Of course the story that stands as the biggest spectacle in this latest anthology is the one which triumphed as this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize winner. The winning story is called My Girl, and it’s the creation of Open University PhD student, Emily Bullock. Since I’ve already reported on Emily’s triumph I’ll send you over to that post to find out more. What I will say though, is I’ve had a bit of a sneaky read of Emily’s winning story and I’ve got to say that I’m mightily impressed with it. Last year’s winning story was very ‘punch in the guts’ (Mum’s The Word by Valerie O’Riordan – you can read my review of it here), and Emily’s story, which is much longer in length, is even more so (quite literally), raising hopes that this latest BSSP anthology could turn out to be even better than last year’s one (diffcult to top, but who knows).

I’ve yet to read 1st runner-up Laura Windley with her story The Kitchen at the Lion, 2nd runner-up Laura Lewis with a story called, Reading Turkish Coffee or any of the other seventeen inclusions in this year’s anthology, so although I read Emily’s winning story before penning my forethoughts, I’ve only cheated a little .

I’ve said on previous occasions that I have huge respect for the judging panel behind the Bristol Short Story Prize, not least because they all seem to have exquisite taste. And I’m delighted to note that the judging panel for this year’s award remains exactly the same as it was last year, with chair Bertel Martin being supported by authors Tania Hershman, Helen Hart and Joe Berger and publishing guru, Maia Bristol. I expect therefore, a similar standard of story quality to that which was published in the anthology last year.

Another thing that has remained more or less the same on previous editions of the anthology, is the design. I love the layout, mainly because each story is accompanied with a small thumbnail of each author and a brief bio, and this – for me at least – really sets things up, providing a nice little introduction to each story. I’m glad they’ve kept this winning format.

I say that the design has remained the same for the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Vol. 4, but of course the cover is different. I don’t know if you’re aware of the design process for the covers for the BSSP anthology, but it’s rather warming. You see, the winning cover is selected from those submitted by students enrolled on design courses at the University of the West of England in Bristol. This year’s winning design is the work of 2011 graduate, Claire Shorrock. It’s fantastic isn’t it, and I strongly suggest that you head on over to Claire’s Tumblr, to gasp in awe at the quality of her other illustration work. Gotta love the Bristol Short Story Prize for giving a step up to those in the early stages of their design career, and they even offer journalism students the opportunity to interview winning authors. Heart of gold that Bristol Short Story Prize.

So there we have it, the briefest of introductions to the new Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Vol. 4. It’s down now to the reading to discover whether this year’s anthology matches up to that of previous years. My ‘journey’ through BSSP 4 will be the same as it was last year (and as it is for every short story collection/anthology I read). I will read and review each individual story before passing opinion on the anthology as a whole. To aid you, and me, I’ve listed all of the stories contained within this anthology below, and I will link to my review of each story as I post it. I hope you stick with me through this one. If it’s anything like last year’s anthology then it’s going to be a thrilling ride. Thoughts and comments are gratefully received.

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:: Contents of the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Vol. 4 ::
(links lead to individual reviews of each story, when posted)

• My Girl by Emily Bullock
• The Kitchen at the Lion by Laura Windley
• Reading Turkish Coffee by Laura Lewis
• No one Has Any Intention of Building a Wall by Ruth Brandt
• Himitsu-Bako by Timothy Bunting
• The Bovine Histories by Ian Burton
• Dressing for Chess by John Fairweather
• Marseille Tip by Niven Govinden
• The Milk Jug by Eluned Granich
• Katie’s Sandpit by Naomi Lever
• The Flies by Miha Mazzini
• What’s Eating Him? by Paul O’Reilly
• Cats and Elephants by Nastasya Parker
• Open Mike Night by Robert Perry
• The Last Fare by Philip St John
• Ernie Breaks by Genevieve Scott
• Brown Bag by Safia Shah
• Baking Blind by Melanie Whipman
• National Gallery by Peter Winder
• The Klinefelter’s Adventures: Chromosome of Havoc by Rachael Withers

Bristol Review of Books Ltd. | 16th July 2011 | £10.00 | PAPERBACK | 180 PP | ISBN: 0955955580

Find out more about Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology #4:

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

Let’s begin, as always, with the publisher blurb:

A man bets all he has on a horse race to pay for an expensive operation for his dog. A young refugee wants to box her way straight off the boat to the top of the sport. Old friends talk all night after meeting up by chance. She imagines a future together.

Stories about people who have lost out in life and in love, and about their hopes for one really big win, the chance to make something of their lives. In silent apartments, desolate warehouses, prisons and by the river, Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh times, and finds the grace notes, the bright lights shining in the dark.

As is fairly obvious from the blurb, there is something wholly gritty about Meyer’s English debut story collection (originally published in Germany under the title, Die Nacht, die Lichter). Meyer’s writing has been described by one reviewer as having an air of ‘dirty realism’ about it. Quick to shake off the tag at his recent appearance at EdBookFest, Meyer said that he had never heard of the term until a journalist had mentioned it to him. Meyer said that he didn’t really like to put himself in any category, he just liked to write about the darker side of life, in a ‘beautiful poetic way.’

And certainly, having had the pleasure of hearing him read at EdBookFest (he read a portion of his prison-based story, Riding the Rails), I’ve got to say that there is definitely something beautiful and poetic about Meyer’s prose. At the same time however, there’s also a rasping rawness to it. A strange combination I know, but oddly it works, and it works really well. I think it takes a special kind of writer to see beauty in that which is not beautiful, and already I’m thinking that Meyer might well be one of these special writers.

After seeing him perform, Meyer unquestionably whetted my whistle for his All the Lights collection. He comes across as one of literature real characters; kind of mix between renegade and genius. He has a strong presence and a supreme confidence (in a non-arrogant way), and this only deepens my curiosity for both Meyer and the fiction that he writes.

Born in the German city of Halle in 1977, Meyer has always lived in East Leipzig. Inspired by a father who has a huge passion for literature and a library containing thousands of books, Meyer was to gain entry to the German Literature Institute in Leipzig in the late 1990s, where he perfected his craft. Showing that he’s cut from a slightly different cloth than your standard literary type, Meyer states in a 2006 interview that he found the first two years at the Institute tough. “I had a hard time with the people. For me they were a bunch of intellectual riff-raff,” he said. This speaks volumes doesn’t it?

Although All the Lights marks Meyer’s debut in the English language, his first published work was a novel written in 2006, entitled Als wir träumten (As We Were Dreaming). All the Lights was originally published in 2008 under the title Die Nacht, die Lichter. It was to win the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the same year. More recently, Meyer has published a third book in Germany, entitled Gewalten (Acts of Violence), which is described as ‘a diary of 2009 in eleven stories’.

If Meyer on his own were not enough to have piqued my interest for reading All The Lights, then I also have the added bonus that this collection has been translated by none other than Katy Derbyshire. I’ve long held Derbyshire on a pedestal, ever since her work on city-lit Berlin where she introduced many untranslated literary snippets to the English language. I have a great respect both for the quality of Derbyshire’s translations, and her ability to remain sympathetic to the author’s voice. It’s not an easy thing to get right, as any reader of translated fiction will know, but Derbyshire seems to have a sublime skill in the art.

Talking in a blog post earlier this year, Derbyshire said the most profound thing with regards to her time spent translating the stories in All the Lights. I really must share it with you:

Translating the stories is tricky but incredibly rewarding. At times I find myself gazing into space, marvelling at how good they are and how lucky I am to be working on them. But most of the time they suck me in and make me frown in concentration, suspending real life all around me.

Wow, just wow.

I also found out that Katy Derbyshire wasn’t only the translator of this title. She was also a key lynchpin in bringing it to the attention of publisher, And Other Stories. This new publisher – who I admit to being most excited about – uses a unique model for selecting books to be published. Basically, they employ a network readers, writers and literary translators to decide on future publications, and it is through this process that Derbyshire encouraged the translation and publication of Meyer’s collection. Looking at the early indications, I’m glad that she did.

So, a ‘renegade’ writer who sees beauty in the darker side, coupled with one of my favourite translators? I can see this being one hell of a journey that I’m about to embark on. As with all of my reviews of short story collections, I will travel though All The Lights in the same way. I will read and review each individual story, before returning with a final ‘afterthoughts’ post, when I will take into consideration the collection as a whole. I have listed the contents below, and I will link to each individual short story review as I complete it. There’s also a strong possibility that you’ll also find me making reference to this collection as I work my way through it, in the pages of my reading journal, and/or on Twitter. Feel free to pipe in with comments and observations any time that you feel like it (especially if you’ve read the collection). I’d love to hear from you.

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Contents of All the Lights:

And Other Stories | September 2011 | £10.00 | PAPERBACK | 240 PP | ISBN: 9781908276018

Find out more about Clemens Meyer:

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

OK, to get a grounding on what The Art of Fact is about, let’s begin with a quick look at the cover blurb:

The Art of Fact is a historical treasury tracing literary journalism back to such pioneers as Defoe, Dickens and Orwell, and to crime writers, investigative social reporters, and war correspondents who stretch the limits of style and even propriety to communicate powerful truth. Here an extraordinary range of styles – the elegance of Gay Talese, the militance of Marvel Cooke, the station-house cynicism of David Simon, the manic intelligence of Richard Ben Cramer – illuminates an extraordinary range of subjects. From large public events (Jimmy Breslin on the funeral of JFK) to small private moments (Gary Smith on the struggles of Native American basketball player), these readings – sad, funny, and most of all provocative – offer the double pleasure of true stories artfully told.

Well, this may be a fairly standard piece of blurb writing which was designed – as these pieces are – to generate some excitement for the book, and I think to some extent it does. There is mention of some big literary nonfiction names here i.e. Richard Ben Cramer and Gay Talese, but what strikes me as fascinating is that Daniel Defoe and Charles Dickens are labelled as ‘pioneers’ of the form. This is interesting because personally I would have classified literary nonfiction solely as a product of the twentieth-century. Of course I’m not naive enough to think that the form just sprang out of nowhere – it has to have roots in the past somewhere – but I’m surprised to discover that those roots stem, according to Kerrane and Yagoda, from these two (maybe I shouldn’t be so shocked because Dickens and Defoe were journalists themselves, after all). Regardless, I’m curious to discover (if I can) just what kind of influence these ‘pioneers’ had on the literary nonfiction today.

Browsing this anthology I can see straight away that most of the entries are extracts from longer works rather than standalone creations. I’m not particularly bothered by this because I think the editors have skimmed the cream from the top of the milk so to speak in order to illustrate certain points. That’s fine, at least it’ll give me a taster of these larger works for now, and if I want to I can revisit them in full at a later late.

So what’s contained in this anthology? Well, you can see the full contents at the foot of these forethoughts, but to clarify first of all, Yagoda states in his preface that the pieces that were chosen – or at the very least shortlisted – were the ones that had, in the first place, met certain criteria. Firstly, all pieces of literary nonfiction had to meet the fundamental principle of being 100% factual, so out went things such as Joseph Mitchell’s Old Mr. Flood (which in effect features a composite character), and John Gregory Dunne’s Vegas (which is as much fiction as it is fact). Secondly, the pieces had to be pure reportage i.e. the journalists are working from gathered factual material and not just from memory and ‘sensory observation’, Thirdly, is something which Yagoda refers to as ‘currency’ i.e. the story is written as close to the time of the event as possible because as the gap between event and writing about it widens, so the event starts to creep into the realms of history.

From the whittling down process the final decision on what to include in the anthology came down to one important element of literary nonfiction – innovation. In other words, the pieces had to demonstrate a new kind of creativity in their construction, while dispensing with the ‘codified standards and agreed-upon shapes’ of mass-produced twentieth-century journalism.

So it’s clear that selection for The Art of Fact was stringent and well considered and it’s no coincidence that I, even with my limited knowledge of literary nonfiction, can spot inclusions from many of those who are believed to be masters of the form. Truman Capote, A. J. Liebling, Hunter S. Thompson, James Agee, Ted Conover and Tom Wolfe are all featured, as is Joseph Mitchell, the man who made me fall in love with literary nonfiction in the first place. I’m also delighted to see that Steinbeck, Hemingway, Orwell and Joan Didion made the cut, even though they are not writers who I would immediately associate with the form (I’m sure their inclusions in this anthology will teach me otherwise ).

What’s also interesting about The Art of Fact, is that the editors have chosen to divide the entries in the anthology into four distinct subsections. The first subsection – ‘Pioneers’ is self explanatory and it contains the entries from those who preceded the established form of literary nonfiction. As we have seen, the cover blurb already mentions that Daniel Defoe and Charles Dickens are considered ‘pioneers’ and my curiosity is further piqued to find the likes of Stephen Crane and Jack London also among the inclusions in this opening section (but then again they were journalists too, weren’t they? ).

The second subsection – ‘Telling Tales’, contains entries from those reporters who have gathered their research – either from being on the scene or from primary sources – and have then woven that factual material into something which either resembles the narrative novel, or as something a little more direct i.e. an enhanced ‘fly on the wall’ account of events. Either way the presence of the journalist is not felt in these pieces.

By contrast, the third subsection – ‘The Reporter Takes the Stage’ – very much puts the reporter in the spotlight of his/her piece. The pieces in this section are from journalists who have broken one the guiding principles of their profession, and they have made their presence felt in their reportage – along with their personal thoughts and feelings – and often with profound results.

The final subsection – ‘Style as Substance’, contains pieces from those journalists who have developed their own unique style of literary nonfiction, be it in the way in which they use a distinctive voice to relate their story, or in the use of an innovative structure on which to deliver it.

Well, I’ve spoken a little about the structure and content of The Art of Fact and it’s now time to tell you something about the beautiful minds behind it. I’ll be honest from the outset and tell you that I know very little about Kevin Kerrane, and I’ve certainly never read any of his writings. I do know however, that he is something of an academic genius. He is a professor of drama, journalism and Irish studies at the University of Delaware.

Ben Yagoda on the other hand I do know, mainly through his book The Sound on the Page (Harper Collins), which has given me great delight and much guidance in the past. Like Kerrane, Yagoda is another respected academic teaching at Delaware, where he specialises in English, journalism and writing.

It was through Kerrane and Yagoda’s professional partnership at Delaware that the idea for the Art of Fact anthology was born. Tired of having to spend countless hours at the photocopier, or in negotiations about copyright agreements, the two professors decided they would take matters into their own hands, and create a sourcebook which would aid the students who enrolled on their literary nonfiction course.

This brings me nicely to revealing my biggest fear about this anthology – that it’s going to turn out to be nothing more than a dry, insipid academic tome which will put me to sleep quicker than any prescription drug. That said, I think it’s going to be anything but sleep-inducing. Not only does Time Out New York tell me on the cover this could be ‘the world’s most readable textbook’ , but as we’ve seen from the range of entries, and the process with which those entries were chosen, there’s something select and ‘cream of the crop’ about this anthology. So rather than bore me to death The Art of Fact should invigorate me, and deepen my love for literary nonfiction (that’s what I’m hoping anyway).

Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating so they say, so my next move is to set off on my journey through The Art of Fact. I aim to record my journey through this anthology in the same way that I do with any other collection or anthology. I will read and review each entry as I proceed (linking to the contents below as I file each review), before returning at the end to give my final review on the anthology as a whole. I’m well aware however, that unlike a short story anthology the aim of The Art of Fact is to educate and enlighten, and I will keep this in mind every step of the way. You will be reflected in my individual reviews, and in my final review of the anthology as a whole. Also keep a close eye on my reading journal, because there’s a good chance I’ll be passing comment on this anthology via that too.

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:: Contents of the The Art of Fact ::
(links lead to individual reviews of each literary nonfiction piece, when posted)

• Daniel Defoe from The True and Genuine Account of The Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild
• James Boswell from The Life of Samuel Johnson
• Henry Mayhew – Watercress Girl
• Charles Dickens – The Great Tasmania’s Cargo
• Walt Whitman from Specimen Days
• W. T. Stead from If Christ Came to Chicago
• Stephen Crane – When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers
• Stephen Crane – An Experiment in Misery
• Richard Harding Davies – The Death of Rodriguez
• Abraham Cahan – Can’t Get There Minds Ashore
• Abraham Cahan – Pillelu, Pillelu!
• Jack London from The People of the Abyss
• Morris Markey – Drift
• Hickman Powell from Ninety Times Guilty
• Walter Bernstein – Juke Joint
• John Hersey from Hiroshima
• W. C. Heinz – The Day of the Fight
• Lilian Rose from “Portrait of Hemingway”
• Norman Lewis – Two Generals
• Gay Talese – The Silent Season of a Hero
• Truman Capote from In Cold Blood
• Tom Wolfe from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
• Piers Paul Read from Alive
• Tracy Kidder from House
• Sylvester Monroe and Peter Goldman from Brothers
• Bob Greene – So…We Meet at Last, Mr. Bond
• Gary Smith – Shadow of a Nation
• Richard Ben Cramer from What It Takes
• George Orwell – The Spike
• Marvel Cooke from “The Bronx Slave Market”
• A. J. Liebling from The Earl of Louisiana
• Al Stump – The Fight to Live
• Norman Mailer from The Armies of the Night
• Hunter S. Thompson from “The Scum Also Rises”
• Ron Rosenbaum – The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones
• Ted Conover from Coyotes
• James Fenton from “The Snap Revolution”
• John Simpson – Tienanmen Square
• Bill Buford from Among the Thugs
• Rosemary Mahoney from Whoredom in Kimmage
• Lawrence Otis Graham from “Harlem on My Mind”
• Dennis Covington from “Snake Handling and Redemption”
• Ben Hecht – The Pig
• Ernest Hemingway - Japanese Earthquake
• James Agee from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
• Martha Gellhorn – The Third Winter
• George Orwell – Marrakech
• Joseph Mitchell – Lady Olga
• Rebecca West from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
• John Steinbeck from Once There Was a War
• Jimmy Cannon – Lethal Lightening
• Jimmy Breslin – It’s an Honor
• Tom Wolfe – The Girl of the Year
• Joan Didion – Los Angeles Notebook
• John McPhee from The Pine Barrens
• Michael Herr from Dispatches
• Ryszard Kapuscinski from Another Day of Life
• David Simon from Homicide
• Svetlana Alexiyevich from Boys in Zinc
• Michael Winerip – Holiday Pageant: The Importance of Being Bluebell

Simon & Schuster | August 1998 | $20.00 | PAPERBACK | 560 PP | ISBN: 0684846306

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.

The first thing I have to make clear about this, my next read in preparation for this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, is that Atlas of Remote Islands (Particular Books; translated by Christine Lo) is NOT a work of fiction. True, Judith Schalansky has never visited any of the islands that she talks about in this book – and neither according to the book’s subtitle will she ever visit them – but everything she includes is supposedly based on fact (or at the very least, myth). So, Atlas of Remote Islands is very much a work of translated NONFICTION, but seeing as I don’t have a subsection on RobAroundBooks for such a category *blush*, I am quite unashamedly dumping it under the heading of ‘translated fiction’. For that I apologise unreservedly, and I can only hope that you will all one day forgive me for my blatant disregard for correct literary categorisation .

OK, so now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s crack on and take a first look at Atlas of Remote Islands, another debut which is in the running for the Newton First Book Award at this year’s EdBookFest. I’ll begin as always with the cover blurb:

Born on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, the only way Judith Schalansky could travel as a child was through the pages of an atlas. Now she has created her own, which takes us across the oceans of the world to fifty remote islands – from Iwo Jima to Tristan da Cunha and from Easter Island to Disappointment Island. On one page are her perfect maps, on the other unfold cryptic stories from the islands. Rare animals and strange people abound: marooned slaves and lonely scientists, lost explorers and confused lighthouse keepers, mutinous sailors and forgotten castaways. Armchair explorers who undertake these journeys will find themselves in places that exist in reality, but only come to life in the imagination.

I’ll admit it, I’m attracted instantly by the promise of rare animals and strange people, marooned slaves and lost explorers, who wouldn’t be? I’m not so sure about confused lighthouse keepers. I mean how are they confused? Can’t they remember where they put the matches to power their lamps? . Whatever the reason, I’m sure it’ll be interesting one.

To be honest though, as far as the blurb goes, I’m most looking forward to discovering how Disappointment Island got its name. I’m imagining a bunch of half-starved sailors clambering ashore only to find that the island’s only tea shop is closed for the winter. I’m sure I’m wrong about that but regardless, the blurb conjures up the promise of a world of adventure, and that’s difficult for a guy who constantly has his head in the clouds i.e. me, to ignore.

The blurb is one thing of course – and it’s certainly does it’s job in piquing interest – but what first strikes you about Atlas of Remote Islands is how fantastic it looks. It’s clear that a heck of a lot of thought and attention has gone into the design of this book, and aesthetically it’s an absolute triumph; so much so in fact that Atlas of Remote Islands singlehandedly turns around any notion that physical books are pale and antiquated in comparison to their electronic counterparts.

On the back cover is the proud declaration that the Atlas of Remote Islands was the winner of the German Arts Foundation Prize for the most beautiful book, and it’s easy to see why. The powder-blue covers are offset with black cloth binding and vivid orange colouring on the page edges, making the book, at first sight, instantly covetable. It’s layout too is exquisite, coming with a lavish double-page spread devoted to each of the fifty featured islands. On the right-hand page is an illustration of the island, and on the left-hand side, along with Schalansky’s prose piece for each island, are the facts and figures about the island, which detail ownership, population, distances from other islands etc. There’s also a timeline showing key events relating to each island, and this, along with much of the other page features, is all accented with the same orange hue that adorns the edges of the page. Delicious!

Now it sounds I suppose, as though I’m completely and utterly seduced by this book already, even before reading it? I guess in an aesthetic sense I absolutely am, but there’s a nugget of doubt in my mind. When a book as luxurious as this in design is presented to me, I’ll always be a little wary. Like a garage trying to sell an old car with a brand a new paint job, I immediately wonder what lies beneath; why such an effort has been put into the aesthetics. Of course, there can only be one of two possible answers – either 1) the seller is trying to dazzle the buyer into picking up something that is essentially substandard, or 2) the seller is so proud of their product that they want to present it in the most glorious way. It’s too soon for me to say of course which of these is correct in relation to Atlas of Remote Islands but I’m inclined to go with the latter, especially after reading Schalansky’s introduction in the book.

In her introduction Schalansky shows that she has had something of a lifelong obsession with atlases. As a child she wasn’t able to travel (a major consequence of being born on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, of course), and so she quelled her curiosity and thirst for wanderlust by burying herself in the pages of an atlas. And it is during these ‘voyages with her index finger’, that Schalansky discovered a love for islands and a passion for their remoteness and bizarre histories. Her obsession has never left her, and these ‘chamber pieces in the middle of nowhere’ have given rise to the creation of this unique atlas. What’s more, in creating this book, Schalansky was able to further fuel her love of atlases and armchair exploration. She states in an article written for The Guardian:

My work on the Atlas of Remote Islands took me on an adventure, an expedition through dusty tomes, travellers’ journals and obscure scientific reports on tiny islands.

A woman who is already obsessed with a subject, being further fuelled by discovery and exploration? I’d say that’s a recipe for success, or at the very least a bibliophile’s idea of heaven, what with her getting the opportunity to rummage around in all of those old, fragrant, dusty tomes and all that.

That brings me nicely to the subject of Judith Schalansky herself, and aside from knowing that she has a bit of a thang for atlases, what else can I tell you about her? Well given that she’s still relatively new to the literary scene (especially the English-speaking one), it probably comes as little surprise to hear that there’s not a great deal of information about her, floating around. I’ve already mentioned that she was born in East Germany (in 1980 in Greifswald, to be precise), and it’s here that she earned degrees in History of Art, and Communication Design.

Currently, Schalansky works as a freelance writer and designer in Berlin, where she also teaches courses in typography at the Potsdam Technical Institute, and that’s got me thinking. Is Judith Schalansky responsible for the design of Atlas of Remote Islands, herself? Nothing on the book either confirms or refutes such a claim, but given her professional qualifications and the fact that she stated in that aforementioned Guardian article that she “drew 50 maps all to the same scale”, such a thing might well be possible. I’ll endeavour to find out dear reader, unless of course you know the answer to that question already?

So there we have it, a short preview of Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands, a book which I’m very excited about diving into. And I’m excited mainly because of Schalansky’s obvious passion for the subject, but also because the whole thing about islands and thinking about them brings a kind of mystique, romantic image to my mind. When I think of islands I think instantly of Homer’s Odysseus and his epic island-hopping return to Ithaca (by far the most soul nurturing thing I studied at university), or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and even Tom Hanks stuck on his island in the movie, Cast Away. All evoke a sense of exotic in me, together with a sense of being stranded, lost and helpless in places far off. And I think that Schalansky has that same feeling (albeit in a more profound way), and I think reading her book will only deepen my own attraction towards these small dots on the globe that look barely bigger than biscuit crumbs. How thrilling the reading prospect is, and I’ll be back as soon as to let you know how my armchair voyage turned out.

Particular Books | 07 October 2010 | £25.00 | HARDBACK | 144 PP | ISBN: 9781846143489

Judith Schalansky will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, in a Newton First Book Award event with Alastair Bruce, on Friday 19th 6:45pm – 7:45pm. For ticket information and booking, please visit the event page on the EdBookFest website.

A note about forethoughts
‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may well be, but when combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.