The Death of Bunny Munro
By Nick Cave
Like a sexually transmitted infection, Bunny Munro is one of those characters that you come across rarely but nevertheless somehow stays with you forever.
He is a talented salesman, an abominable father, a deplorable husband and a despicable human being. He drives around sleeping with housewives while his son waits patiently in the car. He wears zebra-print pants. He doesn’t light his cigarettes; he torches them with a Zippo. In Bunny Munro, Nick Cave has created a monster – every bit as loveable as he is awful.
Cave’s magnetic rock-star style is woven into every fibre of Bunny’s being. And it is spread across every page in this hilarious, original novel. The descriptions bring this book to life like electricity to Frankenstein’s monster: they are raucous, filthy and startlingly precise. For example, when he’s exasperated after too much sex, Bunny’s forelock hangs down over his face like a used condom. It is an expertly observed image, full of character and nuance. Cave spurts four or five of these on every page.
Buoyed by this fantastic imagery, the novel roars along as we follow Bunny Munro and his nine-year-old son travelling around Brighton and its suburbs to “shake the money tree”, that is, selling beauty products to vulnerable women who don’t need them. Bunny himself is having much more than a mid-life crisis, while Bunny Junior is enduring a pre-pubescent awakening. Their dialogue is superb, nailing each character perfectly. A riot of a book: it glistens with sweat, substances and old-fashioned rock and roll.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Gebbie bubble
Words From A Glass Bubble
By Vanessa Gebbie
Hailed by short story competition judges and critics alike, Vanessa Gebbie has certainly made a name for herself over the past few years. Anyone on the short story scene, so to speak, will have heard of her: she is the short story lovey, graduating to a gig as editor on Salt Publishing’s recent collection of essays on how to write short fiction.
Gebbie’s stories should be top-class. But I’m afraid to say that after reading her debut collection, I was not as impressed as the judges or critics (which include Maggie Gee, Zadie Smith and Alex Keegan). I fear for my own writing career: if I can’t understand what’s so supernova about Gebbie, I’ve no chance of learning from her.
That is not to say that the stories in Words are poor or unmoving. They are original, delicate and illuminating. But they are also clinical and, occasionally, even contrived. Take “Closed Doors”: a story that details the observations of a shoe shiner on the guests in the hotel where he works. Each room has a different guest, a different story, an alternate glimpse at life and how people live it. This premise is so incredibly contrived that I began to think Gebbie had employed it for some greater purpose. When the story ended, I was very disappointed: it felt like an exercise a creative writing lecturer would pull to pieces. (This is made all the more tragic by the fact that Gebbie herself is one of the most respected creative writing teachers in the UK.)
I didn’t like the working-class voices that feature prominently in some stories. To me, they sounded inauthentic and even patronising: the characters sounded stupid and inarticulate just because of their class.
The protagonist in “Cactus Man”, an adoptee who is trying to find out details of his birth parents, knows a lot about botany. The Latin names for houseplants trip off his tongue easily, but Gebbie fails to show why this is central to his character. It remains nothing more than a gimmick.
And yet, Gebbie has won more awards than she’ll have space for in her cabinet for sure. I’m obviously missing something – probably her next book.
By Vanessa Gebbie
Hailed by short story competition judges and critics alike, Vanessa Gebbie has certainly made a name for herself over the past few years. Anyone on the short story scene, so to speak, will have heard of her: she is the short story lovey, graduating to a gig as editor on Salt Publishing’s recent collection of essays on how to write short fiction.
Gebbie’s stories should be top-class. But I’m afraid to say that after reading her debut collection, I was not as impressed as the judges or critics (which include Maggie Gee, Zadie Smith and Alex Keegan). I fear for my own writing career: if I can’t understand what’s so supernova about Gebbie, I’ve no chance of learning from her.
That is not to say that the stories in Words are poor or unmoving. They are original, delicate and illuminating. But they are also clinical and, occasionally, even contrived. Take “Closed Doors”: a story that details the observations of a shoe shiner on the guests in the hotel where he works. Each room has a different guest, a different story, an alternate glimpse at life and how people live it. This premise is so incredibly contrived that I began to think Gebbie had employed it for some greater purpose. When the story ended, I was very disappointed: it felt like an exercise a creative writing lecturer would pull to pieces. (This is made all the more tragic by the fact that Gebbie herself is one of the most respected creative writing teachers in the UK.)
I didn’t like the working-class voices that feature prominently in some stories. To me, they sounded inauthentic and even patronising: the characters sounded stupid and inarticulate just because of their class.
The protagonist in “Cactus Man”, an adoptee who is trying to find out details of his birth parents, knows a lot about botany. The Latin names for houseplants trip off his tongue easily, but Gebbie fails to show why this is central to his character. It remains nothing more than a gimmick.
And yet, Gebbie has won more awards than she’ll have space for in her cabinet for sure. I’m obviously missing something – probably her next book.
Short cut to success?
Short Circuit: a guide to the art of the short story
Vanessa Gebbie (editor)
I love reading writers’ methods, their habits and their pathways to publication. I believe in them, but I also believe that a writer can learn a limited amount from other writers. Ultimately, a writer must write and write.
So it is with some caution that I approach such books as this, a collection of essays by successful writers on how to craft short stories. However, for the most part, this anthology is incredibly useful. Its pages are filled with insight, inspiration and unfussy advice. Its contributors strike straight to the point and rarely resort to patronising or obvious guidance. I found particular resonance in Graham Mort’s notion that the text of a good short story is activated by the reader and Vanessa Gebbie’s recollection that a Bridport Prize judge told her that he is looking for a story that makes him forget he is reading a story.
In addition to these specific points, the essays are filled with useful, often original, viewpoints on every technical and emotional aspect of a short story: from setting to theme to form and, of course, power and impact. Highly recommended. Well done, Salt!
Vanessa Gebbie (editor)
I love reading writers’ methods, their habits and their pathways to publication. I believe in them, but I also believe that a writer can learn a limited amount from other writers. Ultimately, a writer must write and write.
So it is with some caution that I approach such books as this, a collection of essays by successful writers on how to craft short stories. However, for the most part, this anthology is incredibly useful. Its pages are filled with insight, inspiration and unfussy advice. Its contributors strike straight to the point and rarely resort to patronising or obvious guidance. I found particular resonance in Graham Mort’s notion that the text of a good short story is activated by the reader and Vanessa Gebbie’s recollection that a Bridport Prize judge told her that he is looking for a story that makes him forget he is reading a story.
In addition to these specific points, the essays are filled with useful, often original, viewpoints on every technical and emotional aspect of a short story: from setting to theme to form and, of course, power and impact. Highly recommended. Well done, Salt!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Not an easy ride
The Road
By Cormac McCarthy
Finally, this weekend I got round to reading McCarthy’s prize-winning, critic-pleasing novel. And I can tell you that The Road deserves all the attention it has garnered. It is a simple, terrifyingly bleak story about a man and his boy surviving in the wastelands left over after some global catastrophe that has killed almost everything and everyone.
In fact, the story is so simple that it feels as if it has always existed. Or, at least, that someone else must surely have told this story before McCarthy. I am not so sure about that, but no one could have told with it with the pathos of The Road.
I felt a tad disappointed in the ending – and it’s not often I say that as I feel it’s an all-too-easy criticism. But I think that this ending didn’t quite nail it – and it certainly wasn’t brave enough. Nevertheless, it is McCarthy’s setting that will stay with me and every other reader. I only hope I can remember the beauty and precision of his prose too.
By Cormac McCarthy
Finally, this weekend I got round to reading McCarthy’s prize-winning, critic-pleasing novel. And I can tell you that The Road deserves all the attention it has garnered. It is a simple, terrifyingly bleak story about a man and his boy surviving in the wastelands left over after some global catastrophe that has killed almost everything and everyone.
In fact, the story is so simple that it feels as if it has always existed. Or, at least, that someone else must surely have told this story before McCarthy. I am not so sure about that, but no one could have told with it with the pathos of The Road.
I felt a tad disappointed in the ending – and it’s not often I say that as I feel it’s an all-too-easy criticism. But I think that this ending didn’t quite nail it – and it certainly wasn’t brave enough. Nevertheless, it is McCarthy’s setting that will stay with me and every other reader. I only hope I can remember the beauty and precision of his prose too.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Only a conjuror
The Magus
By John Fowles
I have just spent two weeks devouring John Fowles’s The Magus. The time has flown by. It is a compelling piece of literature: truly outstanding.
The story concerns a young man who, after a failed relationship in London, takes up a post teaching English on a small, post-war Greek island. There he meets a mature gentleman who begins unravelling his life story. Soon, people from the tales appear and participate in what becomes a dreamlike experience for our man. As he becomes involved with more and more characters from the old man’s often contradictory stories, he begins to question everything he knows or thought he knew. He is not sure whether the old conjuror is tricking or helping him.
It is a simple premise for a novel, but Fowles tells the story with all the truth and complexity of real life. The reader quickly becomes addicted not just to the exhilarating plot but also the characters themselves. The reader is just as clueless as the narrator: therein lies the secret to this finely constructed mystery.
Most impressively, the novel says a great many things about human relationships. As a 25-year-old man from a middle class background, our man still has a lot to learn about the people he encounters and becomes involved with. He matures throughout the course of this novel: indeed, that is the focus of his character development. This could have been more complex, but it is the novel’s only area that needs improvement. Otherwise, Fowles’s novel is perfect. Only a true conjuror could have dreamed it up.
By John Fowles
The story concerns a young man who, after a failed relationship in London, takes up a post teaching English on a small, post-war Greek island. There he meets a mature gentleman who begins unravelling his life story. Soon, people from the tales appear and participate in what becomes a dreamlike experience for our man. As he becomes involved with more and more characters from the old man’s often contradictory stories, he begins to question everything he knows or thought he knew. He is not sure whether the old conjuror is tricking or helping him.
It is a simple premise for a novel, but Fowles tells the story with all the truth and complexity of real life. The reader quickly becomes addicted not just to the exhilarating plot but also the characters themselves. The reader is just as clueless as the narrator: therein lies the secret to this finely constructed mystery.
Most impressively, the novel says a great many things about human relationships. As a 25-year-old man from a middle class background, our man still has a lot to learn about the people he encounters and becomes involved with. He matures throughout the course of this novel: indeed, that is the focus of his character development. This could have been more complex, but it is the novel’s only area that needs improvement. Otherwise, Fowles’s novel is perfect. Only a true conjuror could have dreamed it up.
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