September 2004
Short and Sweet
Three very different collections of short stories
Ever started a good book only to find yourself too busy to give it the attention it deserves? And when you eventually make time to return to it, you discover you’ve forgotten what you read and have to start over again? Short stories are the answer. There are currently so many collections—from classics and modern literature to compilations that explore a general theme—that you’re guaranteed to find a page-turner.
THE EMIGRANTS****
By W. G. Sebald and
translated by Michael Hulse
New Directions, 1997
The Emigrantswas first published in German as
Die Ausgewanderten in 1992. It received outstanding reviews and was considered by many to be among the best novels since World War II. It was chosen as the 1996 Book of the Year by more than a dozen US and British publications and, if read for the first time today, it still lives up to the hype. The four narratives appear at first to be straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile—a doctor, a schoolteacher, Great Uncle Ambrose and a painter. The narrator retraces their routes of exile, which take them from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, and from the southern German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople and Jerusalem. The memories, documents, diaries and snapshots that punctuate the text serve to warm the reader to the subjects.
The Emigrants is unique in that it is unclassifiable, at once autobiography, fiction and historical chronicle. It is impossible to distinguish between real life and imagination in this hybrid and, as a result, the collection leaves the reader constantly questioning the truth. Sebald writes with warm lyricism and immediacy that draw the reader in. The detailed descriptive prose and the photos paint a vivid and moving picture. After reading this book it becomes clear why Sebald’s narratives were proclaimed “among the greatest and most moving achievements of contemporary German writing.”
IRISH GIRLS ABOUT TOWN*
By various authors
Pocket Books, 2004
Best-selling authors Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes and Cathy Kelly top the list of the 16 female Irish writers whose short stories feature in this easy-read collection. The stories predominantly revolve around the joys and perils of love and female friendships. Everyone knows the Irish are great storytellers, but this book reveals that, for some of them at least, their strength does not lie in this genre. The beauty of a good short story is the author’s ability to evoke a vivid picture in so few words, rather than attempting to compact material suitable for a full-length novel. Because the better-known authors have a reputation that precedes them, their stories are disappointing, whereas those by the up-and-coming writers are more enjoyable. The stories in this collection are at best clichés, and at worst capable of making the author of this text long to bury the book in a place where it will never be found. The only people who will really enjoy
Irish Girls about Town are aspiring authors, as it will give them hope that they too might stand a chance of being published one day.
DR. MUKTI AND OTHER TALES
OF WOE***
By Will Self
Bloomsbury, 2004
This is the latest offering from acclaimed British author Will Self. The novella from which the book takes its name,
Dr. Mukti, takes up almost half the book and is accompanied by four short stories. Like most of Self’s previous work, the stories deal with loss and misplacement of humanity and are written in his quirky and dark humorous style. The tale involves a bizarre duel between two rival psychiatrists, Dr. Shiva Mukti, an Indian “of modest achievement but vaulting ambitions,” and the Jewish Dr. Zack Busner, father of the Quantity Theory of Insanity. The two men use their disturbed patients as weapons, referring them back and forth in a dangerous battle for power. Self portrays his characters with colorful precision, from Rocky the Rasta who “adored Shiva with the pathetic doggy affection of a child bullied by its peers who is lent an ear by a sympathetic teacher,” to Creosote Man, “as rank as a fox and as crazy as a stoat.” The conflict reaches a climax with the arrival of Darlene Davis, an anorexic Goth, and marks the beginning of bad things for Dr. Mukti. Against the sinister, destabilizing and amusing tale of Dr. Mukti, which is a disturbing but first-rate read, the other stories fade somewhat in comparison. For many people, the only flaw in Self’s writing is that his vocabulary can be draining to read: he refers to a potato as a “pusillanimous,” mouths are “pink baskets” and cabbage is “craven,” but if you do not find it intimidating to trawl your way through sentences of long words, you will find his stories an absolute pleasure.
