Books still pop through the post and I am always grateful for them. Mostly I have to set them aside for the right reading moment but just occasionally the right one arrives at the right time.The Madonna of the Pool by Helen Stancey arrived on a scorchio summer's day when I had awarded myself some peace and quiet repose up in the summer house. Bookhound had arrived home with a new gravity recliner which needed to be tested and I was up for the challenge.
The book is published by a new venture, Fairlight Books whose mission is...
'... to promote contemporary literary fiction and quality writing, whatever the genre and however it is published. We aim to bring together a community with a shared passion – a love of books and great writing.'
All well and good but my fiction reading mood had been a bit uncertain for a while.
Does this happen to you?
Good, involving stories were evading me, there had been a lot of start-stop-set aside going on and a happy return to more non-fiction, so I wasn't particularly optimistic that the short stories in The Madonna of the Pool were going to be any different...
Wrong.
I read the first story Pavlov's Dogs. Mrs Turton and Miss Willoughby meeting each week to swap their copies of The Lady and People's Friend, the associations of taste, smell and memory woven into their conversations as their friendship develops.
And then onto Bonfire Night and Matthew, the lonely and isolated child made more so by his parents and their need to make every encounter educational and improving. Controlled, confined, constricted and effectively conned out of his childhood, the story ends with a blue touch paper moment and with it, for me, the analogy that his childhood was exactly that...the fuse that would ignite the rest of his life leaving me to wonder what sort of adult he might become.
Short stories that offer life beyond the final line whilst creating enough to be self-sufficient...I love them, and I was loving these, suddenly I was deeply involved and pleased I'd gone for the Factor 50 because it meant I didn't have to move.
There was brave and stoical (Anna's Mother)
The lodger who becomes the surrogate father ( In Memoriam)
The flirtatious teacher and the flattered mother ( How Are You, Mrs Crowther?)
A brilliant insight into the confusions of old age as it becomes a jumble of tangled thoughts and memories. Perceptions mediated through a brain that is re-wiring itself ( Sum Ergo Cogito)
The self-contained and satisfied barrow-man and his dog ( We're Alright Jack)
These were stories about peoples' lives; the hand they are dealt and how they choose to play it, often making the best of it when trump cards are scarce and self-reliance and resilience must (or cannot) prevail. As a psychologist Helen Stancey is well-versed in the foibles and fancies of people's lives, and I was impressed with her ability to use that wisdom whilst not overwhelming her stories with professional expertise. Potential exit strategies are on offer because there are answers here too; clues and pointers, but there are the grace notes of change alongside and either resistance to its tune or an acceptance.
The insidious onset of anorexia and OCD is compellingly drawn; the smallest thing allowing an obsession to develop which quickly morphs into comparisons with the carefree friend who rides life 'bare-back'. Before you know it the patterns of behaviour have knitted together so tightly that to unravel them will be tough (You Can't Rely on Pythagoras)
Sports Day offers new insights into the life behind the child who is bullied and isolated at school because he smells, and a mother's willingness to instigate change is beautifully drawn.
The final story, The Madonna of the Pool, perhaps sums up the essence of the book...those assumptions we make about the lives of others, comparing them with our own and somehow finding ourselves lacking.
Truly an excellent collection of short stories which I commend to the house (as one of our number says at the Endsleigh Salon) and if you could suggest some more I would be forever grateful, because it would seem short stories are the way forward when the Fiction Famine bites.
Meanwhile scroll down for gifts...
Recent Comments