Tag: shortstories

#BookReview Byron and Shelley by Glenn Haybittle

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About the Book

The characters in Glenn Haybittle’s first collection of short stories are all caught in moments of life that bring about a revelation of identity.

A young woman who, after the war, catches sight of the guard who knocked to the ground her blind grandfather on the platform at Auschwitz. The backstory of the man accused of murdering Martin Luther King. The experience of a young girl on Kristallnacht and the subsequent tragic upheavals in her life. A dance teacher accused of sexually abusing one of his young students. A man constrained to return to his mother and look after her while she goes through dementia. A CIA operative grooming a patsy to take the blame for an assassination.

Format: eARC (285 pages) Publisher: Cheyne Walk
Publication date: 16th October 2023 Genre: Short Stories

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My Review

The stories in this collection vary in subject matter and location, and, in particular, in length. Initially I found it hard to detect in all of them the underlying theme of identity described in the blurb. However, gradually I did start to see the connections, some of them obvious (but not necessarily apparent at the time of reading an individual story), some more subtle and others just the odd mention of a name or place. An example of the first is the stories entitled ‘The Patsy’ and ‘Raoul’ whose sinister mood only increases when you read the second story.

There were two standout stories for me. The first was the very moving ‘Mother Love’ in which a son who is caring for his mother suffering with dementia, who has become ‘like a puzzling anagram of herself’, struggles to come to terms with the change in his role, the intimacy of the tasks he has to carry out and the difficult decisions he faces.

The second was ‘The Girls of his Youth’ in which the reader witnesses the chaotic thoughts of a man, possibly also suffering from dementia. Written in a style akin to stream of consciousness, he continually harks back to his past punctuated by a refrain that occurs over and over again. ‘The girls of his youth. The girls of youth break his heart. The girls of his youth make his heart whole again.’

I also enjoyed the first story in the collection, ‘Archaeology’, in which a recently widowed man has to deal with feelings of guilt about his wife’s death and his acute sense of loss. ‘Bereavement is sometimes like wading across a succession of snowfields with no landmark in sight. You are a lone small figure in a vast barren landscape. Other times it’s like a Ferris wheel ride. Like being strapped into a swinging spinning bucket. The dizzying dislocation from familiar grounded reality. The brain regrouping, re-coding, re-evaluating, adjusting itself to a bewildering change in the engrained mental landscape.’ He is also coming to terms with the change in his role, that ‘he’s no longer a husband, just a father’, and gradually realising his limitations as a sole parent to his two young daughters.

The story that gives the collection its title is the longest in the book. Subtitled ‘Brits abroad’ it might just as well have be entitled ‘Brits behaving badly’. Jake arrives in Italy and meets Felix, an actor who has recently played Byron in a film and Ivan, who is writing a biography of Shelley. Alongside their drink and drug fuelled escapades they attempt to discover the whereabouts of a young woman who has mysteriously disappeared. The story’s conclusion is a clever echo of events in the lives of the poets of its title.

The book contains some wonderful descriptive writing and imaginative metaphors. ‘The waves embroider the shingled beach with a ragged silvered stitching; the percussive assent they make as they break and the lamentation as they withdraw over the pebbles seems to come from a distance in time as well as space.’

Byron and Shelley is an interesting and varied collection of stories, with a few misses but also with several that would repay rereading.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Cheyne Walk via NetGalley.

In three words: Intriguing, insightful, diverse

Try something similar: The Wooden Hill by Jamie Guiney

About the Author

Glenn Haybittle is a translator and freelance writer from London who lives in Florence. He currently translates academic books for the Florence University and Italian history books for a Florentine publisher. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Glenn
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#BookReview #Ad God’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu #SUDTP23

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God's Children Are Little Broken ThingsAbout the Book

A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn’t understand then. A daughter returns home to Lagos after the death of her father, where she must face her past – and future -relationship with his longtime partner. A young musician rises to fame at the risk of losing himself and the man who loves him.

Generations collide, families break and are remade, languages and cultures intertwine, and lovers find their ways to futures; from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres, and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer.

Format: Hardback (224 pages)       Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Publication date: 28th July 2022  Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Short Stories

Find God’s Children are Little Broken Things on Goodreads

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My Review

I was fortunate enough to be offered a copy of this short story collection by Emily at Midas PR when it appeared on the longlist for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2023. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit it into my reading schedule at that point but I’m rectifying that now that it has made the shortlist.

The author’s debut collection, it’s described by the publishers as ‘nine exhilarating stories of queer love in contemporary Nigeria’ and has been praised by Sarah Waters as ‘A hugely impressive collection, full of subtlety, wisdom and heart’.

As a straight white British woman I wondered if I would be able to feel a connection with the experiences of characters so different from me. However, at their heart, these are stories about relationships that involve passion, longing, betrayal, tenderness, disappointment and loss, experiences and emotions to which all of us can probably relate to some degree. However, in an environment in which homosexuality not only brings abuse and discrimination but is also illegal, as it is in Nigeria, there is an added element: the need for secrecy and hiding your true self. ‘He was not new to pretense. Wasn’t his entire life a play, and hadn’t he put on, so far, a stellar performance? He had picked this life and sworn to be very good at it because there was no reward in loving boys… It made you the most hated person in the world.’

In some cases, this hatred takes the form of physical violence, even perpetrated within familes. And, for many of the characters, the need to hide their sexuality leaves them open to abuse and violence that they cannot report. Intimacy may be confined to snatched moments in anonymous hotel rooms, in clandestine clubs, teenage bedrooms or even abandoned buildings.  Disclosure can damage careers, destroy reputations and wreck lives.

A story I found particularly moving was ‘Where The Heart Sleeps’ in which the relationship between Nonye and Tochukwu, the partner of Dubem, Nonye’s recently deceased father, changes gradually from hostility to a degree of understanding, united by their shared loss.  ‘They were silent, but it was not the silence of before. It was not exactly comfortable, but it was nice.’ It caused me to think about aspects of discrimination that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to me, such as Tochukwu having no official status, even to have Dubem’s body released to him or to have the right to continue living in the house they shared. ‘It hit him like a sudden shard of light at a precarious bend on a dark road, the extent of his powerlessness.’ And the notion that Tochukwu, as a gay man, must by nature be predatory is reflected in Nonye’s mother’s remark that he ‘will be an old story soon, a memory, something that happened’ and that he will ‘move on to the next man’.

There is some beautiful writing, such as in the first story, ‘A Dreamer’s Litany’ in which a young man gazes at a cityscape from a hotel room.  ‘The city was like a drunken man, it wobbled, garrulous and loud, and then a moment came when it tempered into a fitful somberness, slipping finally into a long, exhausted sleep.’

The stories in God’s Children Are Little Broken Things are often dark, and occasionally distressing, but there are flashes of light in that darkness, such as in the final story, ‘Mother’s Love’. For those sensitive to such things, some of the stories contain scenes of a sexually explicit nature. And there are occasional fragments of dialogue in the native languages of Nigeria which, whilst giving authenticity, did require me to search out translations.

You can find details about the other books on the shortlist here.  The winner will be announced on Thursday 11th May 2023.

In three words: Intense, thought-provoking, intimate

About the Author

Arinze Ifeakandu was born in Kano, Nigeria. An AKO Caine Prize for African Writing finalist and A Public Space Writing Fellow, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is pursuing his PhD at Florida State University. His work has appeared in A Public Space, One Story, and Guernica. God’s Children Are Little Broken Things is his first book.

Connect with Arinze
Website | Instagram

Photo credit: Bec Stupak Diop for Black Rock Senegal