Thank you to everyone who left such kind and encouraging comments on my last post, I really do appreciate it. My brain is feeling less fried from anxiety at impending unemployment, but the slog of job applications means I still didn’t manage as much reading or as many posts for September as I would have liked!
Still, this is one final contribution to Short Story September hosted by Lisa at ANZ Lit Lovers. It’s been such a great event and good encouragement to take some of the short story volumes off my shelf, which always seem to languish in favour of novels.
This one is a perfect example, as I’ve really enjoyed the novels by Deborah Levy that I’ve read (Hot Milk, Swimming Home and The Man Who Saw Everything) and also her volumes of autobiography. She is so precise and incisive, but never cold, and has a way with startling imagery. All of which are definite strengths in short story form, and I was not disappointed by the ten stories in Black Vodka (2013), published by the ever-wonderful AndOtherStories.
Lisa wisely asked us to focus on one story in a collection, which is a great approach as writing about short story collections can be a real challenge. However, for this collection my tired brain struggled to formulate a post on just one, due to Levy’s precise way of writing. It’s very difficult to go into any detail with the stories in this collection, so I’ll just attempt to give a flavour of a few.
The collection is thematically linked through explorations of love in many guises. It opens with the titular story of an advertising executive falling for his colleague’s archaeologist girlfriend.
“There is nothing that feels as good as breathing near someone you desire. The past of my youth was not a good place to be. Is it strange then, that I am attracted to a woman who is obsessed with digging up the past?”
The man is vulnerable and the story describes the delicate moves towards one another made by two people unsure of each other and themselves. The fragility of the self is another recurring theme, as people struggle to sustain identities.
In Vienna, again there is a vulnerable man, unsure of where he lives or who he is after the disintegration of his marriage. His lover, the married Magret, is business-like and forthright. There is a sad humour in the contrast between his fragility and her determination not to be involved beyond the physical act.
“He nods, as if he is a secretary taking notes from an inscrutable Executive Director who wears purple lipstick to frighten the more timid of her staff. She rips the silver foil from a carton of langoustines and slides them into the microwave that still has the price taped to the side. He watches her bend her long neck to check the minutes and seconds and then fold her arms against the pearl-grey cashmere that hugs her small breasts. While she waits she tells him she has no idea why her husband has bought her a microwave.”
While most of the stories are grounded in the everyday – however unsettling that is, especially when feelings are overwhelming – Cave Girl has a slight magical realism edge as a brother tries to cope with his sister changed beyond all recognition.
“My sister Cass thinks that ice cubes in the shape of hearts will change her life.”
A highly readable collection, inventive and moving, sad and funny, where nothing is tied up neatly.
To end, a surprisingly fully-clothed performance from Eugene Hütz and Gogol Bordello 😀
madame bibi lophile recommends 