Bracket is an anthology of twenty
short stories by aspiring English writers, many fresh from ‘creative writing’
courses. The authors are young; of those who give their ages all are under thirty.
Several are working on that prized literary output the ‘first novel’. As editor
Ra Page states in the introduction, we can be forgiven for not recognizing the
names, yet, as none have published any major work. Bracket is clearly an
attempt to promote these young writers to a wider audience. There is something
refreshing about a collection of stories from new writers not yet established
enough to beat a familiar drum, and not yet wily enough to conceal the marks
where their stories are joined at the seams. There may be many such anthologies,
but one still has to admire the optimism of anyone willing to spend their time
prying into things that are none of their business so that we readers might
also pry.   

It may be a truism to say that an
anthology of new writing is ‘mixed’, but it is certainly true of Bracket.
There are a variety of styles, from realist to magical, a range of voices from
the familiar first person confession to the omniscient observer, and a wide array
of characters, male and female, old and young, sick and healthy. The quality is
varied to, with some very accomplished pieces and others that are admirable for
their ambition, but a little flat on the page.

In a few cases less would have been
more. David Lambert’s Father McKinlay has committed a heinous crime. So has the
woman he meets by the sea wall. One crime is expiated while the other is not,
making for a complex moral tale that seems, even for a short story, incomplete.
Char March captures a dense series of images that get a bit bogged down in the
rat-a-tat-tat machine gun style of the prose. Five sentences to a line can be a
bit much. And Sheena Brabazon’s vignettes are almost too sparsely positioned to
figure out what comes between. But at least the authors are trying something.
For all their faults these stories are fresh and inventive, not slavishly
formulaic.    

A standout story is Sarah Tierney’s
Five miles out. Cass is consigned to a beach holiday with her cousins
while her sister, Isabelle, is dying of anorexia. Cass strikes up a
relationship with a boy intent on proving himself. Both Isabelle and the boy seem
set on self destruction with Cass left to ponder the futility of it all. This
is a powerful, simply told tale, illustrating the maxim that the story teller’s
first job is to tell a story. In The priest Tim Cooke paints a gothic
picture of a disintegrating life, or is it two? This story is reminiscent of
Peter Carey’s short stories, as it moves from believable observations to a
strange world that could be in the mind of the narrator, or then again not.
Penny Anderson tells an inventive and disturbing story of a woman sitting at a
computer monitor answering distress calls. Help me is a story of
alienated lives, and of the search for comfort in anything remotely capable of
a human response. In Revelations of divine love, Annie Kirby explores an
unusual adolescent relationship between two girls. Juliana has seen the ‘bloodless
face of Christ’. An outsider in the village of Gwri-Fawr, apparently naïve and
overprotected, Juliana nevertheless has a lot to teach her classmate Terelei. The story is based on unlikely meetings and the things they reveal.     

The short story is a demanding
form. Every word counts and every sentence needs to earn its place. Even the
smallest redundancy has no place to hide. The reader needs to emerge, as if
from a dream, knowing that it’s all made up, but believing it could all happen.
The authors of Bracket rise to the challenge, and if in a few cases a
stray word, an overwrought phrase or a less than credible plot disturbs the
reverie of reading, there’s always another story that takes us back to that
place where we can believe in fiction.  

© 2006 Tony O’Brien

Tony O’Brien is a short story
writer and lecturer in mental health nursing at The University of Auckland, New
Zealand: a.obrien@auckland.ac.nz

Categories: Fiction