Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Empty Bones & other stories..........an eclectic collection which includes a novella and five quirky short stories

'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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