Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Sweet As, Contemporary Short Stories by New Zealanders — an ebook.


What a merry mixture. Comparable with the unlikely combinations that surf across the palate in the Christmas season. Liquorice toffee with the morning cuppa. Whipped cream and gin-laced strawberries with meusli. Cold new potatoes for elevenses. Eclectic and mostly agreeable.

Thirty-odd writers are represented in this collection, the proceeds of which go to IHC. Almost all stories induced me by their content or brevity to read the whole. All possessed flavour, colour and form. Some were chewy and puzzling, others a bit raw (in theme or delivery). Some were experimental, with mixed results. A couple were exquisite.

Between them the writers conjure embarrassment, domestic abuse, grief and catharsis, murder, birds, love, babysitting, rest-homes, islands, departures, lost parents, a war vet, a dog, a piano … life, life (mostly) in NZ.

Of those that combine fine writing and satisfying construction, these are memorable: Kate Mahoney’s ‘My Mother and the UFO’ with its sensitive forays into the complex layers of feeling and need between the narrator and her Alzheimic mother. Gay Buckingham considers how the paralysis of grief might be ended (‘In Bath, in Autumn’). In a very small setting (‘What Anton Learns in the Queue’) Janis Freegard’s character is drawn deftly into identification with otherworldly Bernadette and into taking his next necessary step. Grief fastens onto anxiety about hair in ‘These Last Desires’ by Wes Lee. Jo Randerson touches powerfully (and with delicate skepticism) on fate and the numinous with her story within a story, ‘The Great Balance’. In ‘The Snack Machine’, Lawrence Patchett provides a somehow languorous but sharply observed ‘slice of life’ between a man with a sore back and his girlfriend’s energetic son. ‘Flower, Flowers’ by Wendy Moore summons another country/city and a dangerous liaison with eternal (or at least annual) consequences. In ‘Moonlight Crossing’, Deb Potter’s character — carrying ashes — feels out the bushline by night, and B.L.Stocker in ‘Nobody’s wife’, subtly evokes a pivotal moment in a marriage. Maggie Rainey-Smith’s protagonist looking ‘Through the Belgian Glass’ is a satisfying study: a personality captured and worried into exposure.

This was a collaborative project envisioned by a writing group, its production supported voluntarily by others, with Blair Polly and Wendy Moore as project editors. Well done, Team Sweet As. There’s something for everyone here. I suggest you buy a copy. Or buy several to encourage 30 Kiwi writers and support IHC Wellington.

Penelope Todd

January 2015

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