'Empty Bones and other stories'
by Breton Dukes
Published by VUP (2 May, 2014)
RRP $30.00
Reviewed by Wellington writer/book reviewer Maggie Rainey-Smith.
This is an eclectic collection which includes a novella and
five quirky short stories. Dukes has a
very cinematic style of writing, but not in the traditional sense, his words
conjure up intense images but they don't always cohere or flow in the way that
you expect. The stories reward with a
second reading.
Dukes
is described as a telephonist for the government (a detail I enjoyed for it's
odd innuendo almost), but too because it is so defiantly under-stated and I
like that his interests include rabbit shooting, tenting and cookery. All of the stories contain the visceral while
at the same time eschewing it. That's a contradiction I know, but it is how it
felt when reading the stories. At times
there is a real intensity of emotion and yet at the same time a strong sense of
disconnection. The strengths lie in the unexpected and originality of
descriptions of ordinary things, like 'the yacht club is a face of black
windows', not to mention the birth of a
frozen chicken and someone's face packed tightly like a packet of raisins (not
a direct quote, but a memorable image).
I've
not read any of Dukes work before but I see from a twitter quote that Emily
Perkins wrote "Wow. Breton Dukes' Bird
North is a knockout. Brilliantly intense book". Intense is true of this collection. The title story, the novella 'Empty bones' is
very much a family story. A disconnected
Dad (replete with new teeth and a facelift) orchestrates a reunion with his
children, two sons and a daughter.
They're an odd mob, or are they? I wasn't sure. Dukes cleverly captures the
oddity of the ordinary. One of the sons,
Chris, brings his woman friend Kaile, a gym instructor to the reunion, and this
sets up a weight-lifting competition where everything seems to be at stake and
sides are taken. The other son, Marcus takes a detour en route to the reunion
for a brief sexual encounter, just because he can, and in spite of his wife at
home with a toddler. Kaile an almost
stranger, becomes central to this estranged family. All of his characters have
an edgy originality. I might add, Dukes
writes well of sex from a male point of view. Too, there's a great father
daughter moment that I almost missed or misunderstood, but a second read
revealed.
All of
the stories are dense with detail from the way a door is hung, to the peculiar
posture of a person, or some quirky unexpected detail ('her shadow was long with drooping bags for
hands'), but at their heart are relationships, working or not working, and
often a sense of lurking menace. 'A
Lonely Road' is a good example of this, except the menace more than lurks.
The final
short story 'The jetty' begins like this "Still swearing about the pasta,
Tom went heel-first down the steep track.'
It's the heel first that is arresting and this is what Dukes does well. This story seduced me. It was more linear than the others - a man and a woman out tramping, and he has
seduction in mind when he suddenly realises, he hasn't packed the pasta for
dinner - a sense of panic is developed
and as the story unfolds, menace even... but yet again, I wasn't entirely sure, by the
end... and that perhaps is what Dukes
intends. There are definitely no nice
wrap-ups.
It set
me to thinking about George Saunders, the new and much heralded American short
story writer. I recently read his
collection 'Tenth of December' and it took me a while to get into the voice,
but once I settled in I was startled, surprised and greatly moved at times. With Dukes, I was more surprised and startled
at first, but increasingly engaged, and rewarded by a second reading. You have
to say, what rich pickings from VUP with these two collections out at once, and
why not read both and see what you think.
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