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Post by PeterC on Aug 4, 2021 15:47:26 GMT
The New Abject – Tales of Modern Unease
Edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page (Comma Press, 2020, £9.99)
The theme of this underwhelming collection is our supposed fear of things shed or become separate from us, ranging from toe-nail clippings to something called ‘the underclass’. Some of the stories compensate for the stultifying introduction but not many.
Bernadine Bishop – Stool: Somewhere in suburbia there is an unflushed lavatory.
Christine Poulson – Teeth and Hair: Polly wants to go and live with her maternal aunt in America but her widowed father won’t allow it. When she and Nell, her young carer, find a Polly’s mother’s wedding dress they decide it’s time for a bit of witchery.
Gaia Holmes – The Universal Stain Remover: A young woman loves washing and scrubbing. She takes in her bullying ex-boyfriend who’s clearly not changed his ways. One afternoon, while he’s dozing in a hot bath, she thinks of a way to clean him up good and proper.
() (( - Lara Williams: Another young woman gets a strange illness that causes spiky hairs to erupt all over her body. Her boyfriend doesn’t seem to mind. Then one evening he refuses to share his McDonalds McMuffin.
Meave Haughey – The Reservoir: Meredith is pregnant and fixating on old floods and the local reservoir, long-since drained. She dreams of water, surging and seeping everywhere. The family’s flat grows damper but she can’t establish the cause. Then a local woman is found murdered.
Margaret Drabble – The Leftovers: A woman day-dreams about childhood games she played with her cousin as she cleans up the various smudges left by her last house-sitter. Then she comes across a surprising find that might form some kind of message.
Saleem Haddad – An Enfleshment of Desire: In riot-torn Beirut, a woman and her lover engage in brutish, adulterous sex that reflects the turmoil in the streets. Back in New York with her husband, life is peaceful and safe but something is missing.
Matthew Holness – Bind: A man enters an art exhibition thinking of his lost daughter. He wanders down a lot of corridors into some sort of confrontation.
Sarah Schofield – Rejoice: A schoolgirl watches old video-tapes of Margaret Thatcher. She starts to dress up as Mrs T; the hand-bag, the M&S dresses, the head-scarves. Then she starts mimicking her voice, insisting that the NHS is safe. Which of course it is.
Adam Marek – It’s a Dinosauromorph, Dum-Dum: A very right-on, middle-class couple visit similar friends on the coast. The friends have Magic Reality, which enables them to conjure up a playful dinosaur for their little boy and some snazzy décor for their house. But Magic Reality can also be used to cover up ugly secrets.
Karen Featherstone – Misisedwuds: The marriage of a well-off couple is going off the tracks. Their troubles include an efficient nanny, a big, soft pet dog and some dodgy interior design. But are any of them actually dangerous?
Gerard Woodward - The Honey Gatherers: A couple start a business selling free-range honey. They start to feud with a neighbouring bee-keeper. They go into town one evening and get caught up in a brawl in an ice-cream parlour.
Paul Theroux – Adobo: An Englishman living in the Philippines marries a Filipina. He’s quite fond of the wild pigs who sometimes invade his garden but his new wife has culinary plans for them. She buys a rifle and things turn nasty.
Mike Nelson – On Monkeys Without Tails: A reclusive invalid living in a near-future London ponders on the memories stirred by an old wooden bureau.
Alan Beard – The Room Peels: A man leaves his wife and child and takes a bed-sit over a café. Years pass, the café closes and the building empties. He decides to stay indoors for a while.
Mark Haddon – O Death: A black comedy about a dysfunctional family with seething resentments and a dark secret lurking in the freezer.
Lucie McKnight Hardy – Wretched: Our hero lives in the bleak near-future, where people are bar-coded, spied upon and forced to wear masks. Things look up when he gets a job spying on anti-social elements. Then his girlfriend lets him in on a secret.
David Constantine – Out of the Blue: A refugee falls off an aeroplane and crushes to death a man sunbathing in his garden. His girlfriend meets the refugee’s wife and they get along very well.
Ramsey Campbell – Extending the Family: An old man is irritated by the irresponsible antics of his slovenly neighbours. Neither their landlord or the police are much help so he goes round to sort them out and gets a big surprise.
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 4, 2021 16:39:08 GMT
The New Abject – Tales of Modern Unease Edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page (Comma Press, 2020, £9.99) The theme of this underwhelming collection is our supposed fear of things shed or become separate from us, ranging from toe-nail clippings to something called ‘the underclass’. Some of the stories compensate for the stultifying introduction but not many. My review is too long to post here, but I think I disagree! |
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Post by helrunar on Aug 4, 2021 17:11:46 GMT
Weird, please post a link to your review--I'd like to read it.
Cheers, Hel
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 4, 2021 18:05:25 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Aug 4, 2021 18:56:50 GMT
Thanks, Weirdmonger. Wow, intense stuff here.
cheers, Hel.
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