Author: Sara Crowley

Nightjar press – 4 chapbooks

Sara Crowley2 Comments

Nightjar Press is an independent publisher of limited edition individual short story chapbooks. It’s delightful to see single short stories published with such care. Each of the four stories I was sent have rather ace cover illustrations and cost £3.
It’s difficult to review short stories without being spoilerific, but I’ll give it a go:

Lexicon by Christopher Burns

My knowledge of Greek mythology is minimal and it is with a smidge of shame that I admit I wasn’t familiar with Asterius before reading this tale. I searched Wikipedia afterwards and it seems that Burns may be riffing off Jorge Luis Borges 1947 short story “The House of Asterion.” Whilst knowledge of that may enhance the reading pleasure I don’t feel it marred my own enjoyment.
The narrator is an amusing man, a self-important academic who has invited a woman to dinner. He speaks enthusiastically about the Greeks, keen to “illuminate” her on the subject. He knowingly tells the reader “I like to begin my social evenings with a little minor irritation.” Passages on Asterius are interspersed with Harry and Heather’s evening in this neat story with a dark heart.

                                        
Field by Tom Fletcher

This is a horror story in which you can almost hear a film score ratcheting up the tension as the protagonist, Tom, a forestry Commission warden, sets off to deal with a group of youths camping illegally at the edge of the lake. Irritated by his junior colleague, Sarah, yet perfectly at ease with the idea of confronting the youngsters, they set off in his Land Rover. They find the tents and sleeping bags, but where are the people? 







Sullom Hill by Christopher Kenworthy


The first line immediately had me wanting to know more: “When Neil Kingsley came around, I’d hide under the window-sill and pretend not to be in.” 

Three young lads, one with special needs and a mental age much younger than his years, form a type of friendship; one of those uneasy alliances that schoolboys find themselves in sometimes. Tony is a bully who loses friends with worrying regularity. Neil is a young man with difficulties who thinks of the narrator as his pal. I read with wariness, worrying about what would happen. It’s a story full of evocative descriptions, of the boys, the hill, the weather, and it ends in a particularly unsettling way.





Remains by Ga Pickin

There is an immediate and effective sense of place and I could almost feel the cold, shivery weather. 

“A head wind was getting up, and it sighed against his ears like Chinese whispers. Disdaining his choice of warm clothing, its chilled breath slid down his collar and up his sleeve, between buttons and past his T-shirt, touching his bare skin.”

Brr.
This is a marvelously atmospheric and creepy story. The narrator, an experienced walker, has set out to meet friends in a holiday cottage. The light is fading and the batteries of his torch stop working. It’s beautifully written, the landscape becoming eerier as the story progresses. I raced to the end, anxious to know what would happen. 



I can genuinely say that each of the stories is of a high quality and I really love what Nicholas Royle is doing for the short story here. Bravo.

National Flash Fiction day

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I think it’s so cool that May 16th is National Flash Fiction Day. I heart flash and I’m delighted to be a) featured over on NFFD’s site and b) helping to judge the NFFD Flash competition. Details are here but basically you have until 31st January to submit your awesome flashes of not more than100 words to be in with a chance of winning some delicious books and a whole heap of glory.

"Being Dead" – Jim Crace

Sara Crowley4 Comments


Celice and Joseph, a fifty plus couple, are the “dead” of the title. We witness their deaths and watch as they lay undiscovered for a few days, while being told their story. The omniscient voice here has the same kind of chilly detachment I equate with some other male literary “names.” (McEwan for one.)  
There are beautiful descriptions throughout with Crace employing a scientific eye to zoom in on the decomposing bodies, and smoothly taking us to the past to watch the developing relationship between Celice and Joseph. 
“She could reach high corner cobwebs with a dusting stick and spin grey candyfloss.”
“…his hand on hers, their faces rhyming…”
and many more such descriptions are evocative and vivid. The forensic detailing of decaying corpses is suitably gross. However the marriage of Celice and Joseph doesn’t convince any more than the other aspects of their lives. They are in their fifties but seem much older. Even in youth Joseph was dull but Celice was not, I don’t think. When Syl, their daughter, is introduced I hoped she would inject some energy into the novel but alas, she is just another female described in such a way that we understand that although she, like her mother before her, has desires, her sexual encounters are joyless. She has “use” of a man. Crace’s men want sex and are stupid because of it, his women want sex with men sometimes but are mostly reluctant, desperate (Celice), or do so to gain something, (a lift in Syl’s case). All the characters seem so dry and it is hard to care for people described so coldly, even when they are dead.

Despite the murders, the tragic death in their past, and the search for them by Syl, there seems precious little story. There’s no hope in the end, no resolution. They are dead, Syl lives on. Blah blah blah. I like the idea of examining a life backwards and forwards by focussing on a few key events but although Crace clearly writes well these people never came alive for me and I remained utterly unmoved throughout.

✰✰✰


End of year thing

Sara Crowley9 Comments

I feel like there should be an end of the year post but I have such a lousy memory I can’t recall all the things I liked best. I listened to Nicki Minaj a lot  and I have much love for her. “Did it on ’em” was a song that actually made me go “What the fuck is this? What is she saying?” and then “Oh my god, it’s amazing. She’s amazing. This is perfect.” I’m so glad there is a woman more than equal to the top guys in the field, and that she is recognised as such.

I have sadness that there’s still “top guys in the field” instead of top people. It’s true all over – TV, comedy, writing, whatever. There are the successful men and then the select women who are deemed of rare enough quality that they get to hang there too. Even on twitter amongst the people who tweet about lit stuff it seems there’s a boys club (with separate UK and US branches of these in the blog world too) and only a few honorary women. Anyway, a massive cheer for Caitlin Moran who somehow managed to write a clever, funny, brilliant, best selling (number one on the list for weeks and weeks) book about feminism (even if it is mainly a biography) How To Be a Woman.

Favourite novels of the year are The Canal by Lee Rourke and The Coward’s Tale by Vanessa Gebbie. Fave short story collections are Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower and Ayiti by Roxane Gay. Speaking of Roxane Gay, it’s been a pleasure to read her intelligent, articulate thoughts online in a wide variety of places (HTML Giant, The Rumpus, and her own blog to name a few.)

Fave TV show was Sons of Anarchy. Compelling viewing that just kept relentlessly building. We’re a season behind the US here and I am so looking forward to watching Season 4 when it airs. I also loved The Mentalist. I want to be Patrick Jane, and date Cho.

Film of the year? No idea. I saw Thor yesterday though and really enjoyed it. Home and Away boy has done good! And learned how to open his eyes. How buff? More fun than I expected too. I appreciated the Shakespearean swagger and am really looking forward to Whedon’s Avengers.

Scent of the year – Amazing Grace by Philosophy. Absolutely gorgeous. Fresh, clean, non-cloying.

Meal of the year was in the Fork and Field where I tasted the best pasta I have ever had. Seriously so good that I couldn’t stop smiling. It was Gratin of Macaroni with spinach, parmesan and fresh truffle and was perfection.

Book-selling hurrahs were realising we’d sold over 100 copies of Janice Galloway’s Collected Stories, and selling out of Kuzhali Manickavel’s Insects Are Just Like You and Me Only Some of Them Have Wings yet again, selling heaps of The Best British Short Stories, and ordering in goodies like Roxane Gay’s Ayiti and Breece D’J Pancake‘s Collected Stories. I get a real thrill introducing people to damn good writing and I’ve never had anyone come back and complain about a recommendation I’ve given so I hope that’s a good sign.

More personally, my family have struggled through hellish times this year but emerged stronger. I pack the sad, angry, bitterness down inside me and carry on. What else to do? One of my boys made up a song – “I’ve got an arch of love for you” – and he sings it, complete with arm gestures, to me. I congratulated my other son on how well he dealt with an awkward situation – “I model myself on you,” he said. There is nothing more precious, more wonderful, than my twins. My resolution for 2012 is the same as the advice I give to my beautiful boys – “Be the best you that you can be.”

Happy new year y’all.

Bookshop baloney

Sara Crowley8 Comments

This Christmas seems particularly GRRsome to me. Not sure why, perhaps it always does. At work on Saturday my irritation felt like a nagging toothache. I don’t think it showed though – at least, not to the customers. 


I work on the first floor and am often puzzled by how many people are surprised to hear the book they want is on a different floor above.
“You have another floor?”
“Yes, we have five floors in all.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
Ridiculous? Really? 
Or
“On the next floor?”
“Yes.”
“How do I get there?”
“We have stairs,” I gesture with a sweep of my arm. “Or a lift just here.”
“For god’s sakes.”


So many people so cross that there are more floors. The coffee shop on the third floor? Tsk. Reference on fourth? Tut. How do they cope in department stores?


Then there are the people who ask “Where can I find so and so?” I look it up on the computer and confirm that we have a copy, or several.
“On the next floor up, on the left. You can ask the assistant at the counter and they will show you.”
“Right. Thanks.”
And I watch them head down the stairs and out of the shop.


A man handed his book to me to scan and it set off our alarm. Deactivating the tag requires me to rub the book over the desktop where the machine beneath does its duty. 
“Don’t rub my book.”
“I’m sorry …”
I sympathised, I like my books pristine too. The book doesn’t get damaged though. He paid the £9.99 with a £10 Waterstone’s gift card. I told him he had one penny left on the card and handed it to him.
“Where’s my penny?”
I repeated that it was on his card.
“Don’t you dare try to cheat me out of my penny. I know my rights. Where’s my one pence? I DEMAND my money.”
Sigh.


A regular customer comes in. I haven’t seen him for a while. He travels for over an hour on the bus to visit us but he’s ill, and his illness has worsened. He’s not sure he’ll be able to keep  coming. Then another man tells me about the disease that is killing him. 


My colleague took a phone call from a woman wanting a poetry book that she thought might have a blue cover. Yup, that’s totally not a bookshop myth, it’s a thing that happens regularly.


A guy asked me for a Kindle Voucher. Erm… nope, not gone be selling one of them.
“That’s like asking for a Starbucks Gingerbread Latte in a Costa Coffee,” said another customer. 





The only book to be reviewed twice on my blog: Luke and Jon by Robert Williams

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My son Dylan has been reading Luke and Jon and discussing it with me. I asked him if he’d like to write a review for my blog. He said yes, but that he was going to say exactly what he thought and hoped he didn’t upset the author. 


“I think Luke and Jon was very beautifully written. It had a really good mixture of chapters that go from death to new beginnings. I like the fact that Luke and his dad were in a way outsiders in a little creepy village which they had never heard of and only had enough money to buy a cheap crumbling and depressing house. Then Luke meets probably one of the strangest but loving and intelligent people: Jon. I think it’s absolutely touching when Luke and Jon become best friends. My favourite bit was when Luke and his dad adopted Jon, it really made me emotional. My only dislike about the book was the ending even though it was a lovely ending about his mum in the sea I would of liked to read more about how Luke his dad and Jon lived together but it wasn’t a let down because everything else made up for it in this wonderful book.”


Review by Dylan Crowley






Tiny things

Sara Crowley5 Comments

My teeny story “Glimmer” is in a new magazine called “What the Dickens” – you can read it here, alongside words by Kirsty Logan, Angela Readman and Sandy East (amongst others).


I like wigleaf very much. It’s the coolest, smartest lit kid on the block. They just tweeted “Pre-written Facebook statuses (to save people time): “I’m rich!” “I’m smart!” “I play with the big boys!” “I’m talented!” “I’m important!””
Hee hee.


I feel the need to mention Pan Am. It’s clearly a Mad Men wannabe with no substance and nowhere near as much style as it wishes it had. I have to watch though because – Donna from Neighbours! Also, what the fuck is Christina Ricci doing? She seems to be channeling Betty Boop. 


In other bad telly news I am persevering with The Ringer purely because, y’know, she was Buffy. It reminds me of Sunset Beach in both a good and bad way. Also it seems clear that Sarah Michelle Gellar is not so great an actress but Whedon is such a genius it wasn’t a problem.


Toodles.

Vanessa Gebbie

Sara Crowley1 Comment

I’m so excited that Vanessa Gebbie will be signing copies of her debut novel “The Coward’s tale” tomorrow at Waterstones, Brighton from 11 a.m. Not only that but she will also be writing personalised tiny fictions for anyone who buys it. She’ll add your name, or any name you choose, and a few other unique details. A wonderful idea, and a really different Christmas gift. 

More details here.