KILLINGS

Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

In ‘Up North’, the fourth story in The Dead Fish Museum, a man whose wife is having a string of affairs says, ‘Our marriage was like a constant halving of the distance, without ever arriving at the moment in time where, utterly familiar, I’d vanish’. In the collection’s final story, ‘The Bone Game’, a man comes across a crystal clear stream, but the fish, which the native Americans believe are their ancestors, are ‘thin and weak and mutilated, their flesh ripped and trailing from their bodies like rags’. Charles D’Ambrosio’s second short story collection is full of these inexorable equations: lives diminishing without fully disappearing.

One way of coming to terms with the diminishing returns is to accept that life is a pretty low-stakes deal. Tony, the narrator of ‘Blessing’, describes heavy misfortunes as ‘gyps’. He’s an insurance broker, so he knows all about hedging bets: ‘You expect a normal life, but wager against it.’ Boons aren’t of much consequence either; Tony’s wife, Meagan, an actress for whom parts are proving elusive, says, ‘I love you … At least there’s that’. In ‘The Scheme of Things’, Lance and Kirsten live off small amounts of money – ten bucks a pop – that they procure by posing as charity workers.

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So, the final teaser for Issue Two before its release on July 1. Newcomer Samuel Rutter’s story, ‘Comfort Inn’, is a laconic account of glancing connections set in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s cold. He’s wearing a jacket – because you never put your jacket in your checked luggage – but it’s only a light jacket, and he’s only got a thin T-shirt underneath, and here it feels like it’s capable of snowing. He’s waiting on a concrete platform outside the airport in Atlanta, Georgia, waiting for a minibus because he has missed his connecting flight. He’s not the only one being put up at the Comfort Inn, but none of the others are looking at him, or paying him any attention. No one is talking at all. A girl in a leather jacket flicks a cigarette butt into the gutter. A mother smacks her child.

The lady at reception is fat and understanding: ‘Well, sir, that is an awful long way to come.’ He accidentally brushes her clammy hands as she gives him the key to his room, which is not a key but a plastic card twice as thick as a credit card. She is smiling, but her left eye is bruised and puffy.

His room is at the far end of the corridor on the fourth floor (he can take the elevator on the other side of the lobby), but no one is offering to show him the way. He doesn’t have any bags, either. He supposes that his luggage is in transit.

So this is America, he thinks. I’m not even supposed to be in America, I’m supposed to be in Mexico. The elevator walls are lined with mirrors, and he sees that he’s not looking too good after the flight. His face and his hair get so greasy. He pulls a stray nose-hair from his left nostril, which makes him sneeze all over the mirrored wall.

Pre-order Kill Your Darlings Issue Two or subscribe to the print journal here.

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Emmett Stinson is an American who moved to Australia in 2004 – and it was only with distance from his homeland that he could write Known Unknowns, his debut collection.

Podcast roadmap: Washington DC; corpses; Capgras syndrome; the best place to buy drugs in America; The Education of Henry Adams; spoiling the end of The Great Gatsby; failure in the American tradition; Phantoms in the Brain; the terrible ending of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; the disintegration of systems; rampant individualism; how the writing brain is informed by the editorial brain; the Federal Government’s Book Industry Strategy Group.

Visit Emmett Stinson’s blog.

Download the podcast here. Podcasts appear fortnightly. You can download previous podcasts or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

Music is Pompey.

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If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This
Robin Black
Publisher: Scribe Publications (Australia and New Zealand)
ISBN: 9781921640421
RRP: $32.95

The title of Robin Black’s debut short story collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, is an intriguing premise. What would she tell us, and why doesn’t she love us? We’re a little bruised from being excluded, but still curious. We come to know that the title perfectly reflects the earnest and considered tone of Black’s work. This bright-eyed honesty underpinned by a glassy covertness makes for a title that’s a fitting introduction to the stories within.

Black’s protagonists, impressively diverse, are poised on the edge of change and transition. In ‘Immortalizing John Parker’, seventy-year-old Clara Feinberg paints portraits for a living. She is mourning the loss of her lover, and is struggling to continue her work when she is commissioned to paint the portrait of John Parker by his wife, Katherine. She initially attributes John’s ‘dullness’ to personality; however, the reality is far more haunting. The pace is more akin to that of a novel than a short story; perfectly measured and illuminated by Black’s restrained style. Read more

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As a child, I was entranced by the Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where the Wild Things Are. I can actually remember learning to read and what a difficult and pointless process it seemed, spelling out all those bloody letters and trying to sound out words. The relief when I could finally make enough sense of it all to actually enjoy picking up a book. When my nephew was about six, he began quietly reading in the car, and saying ‘Shh, Kalinda, now I’m just reading’ so he could shut me up and focus on his novels. The books got fatter and his words longer. I see myself in him at that age. Read more

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