Poet’s literary gifts struggle in debut fiction
British poet Adam O’Riordan’s debut collection of fiction, The Burning Ground, is rich with moody atmosphere, but ultimately short on delivering the sustained emotional fireworks promised by his obvious talents. While his ear for crisp, compelling language is apparent, many of the stories feel a little too movie-ready, as if the camera’s hovering in the wings, anxious to swoop in for a close-up. It’s perhaps no coincidence that all eight stories — wildly different in tone and premise — are set in and around the glitzy wastelands of Los Angeles.
Take “Rambla Pacifico,” a sprawling tale about a foreman who ventures into the California underworld to solve the disappearance of his employer’s daughter. Occupying that no man’s land between longish short story and slight novella, it’s set up like a noirish, Pulp Fiction thriller. The electric premise quickly morphs into uneven boilerplate territory, as if O’Riordan has lent his poet’s eye to a second-rate studio film script. Meanwhile in the collection’s title story, an elderly painter pines for his younger mistress a full five years after the dissolution of their strangely passionless affair. O’Riordan is mostly impeccable with pacing and rhythm, spinning out slow-motion suspense with ease, but in this story the effect is heavy-handed, culminating in the overwrought, climactic burning of a set of expensive paint brushes.
Elsewhere, O’Riordan’s descriptions of women are often unconvincing, and at their worst, steeped in cliché, such as the “low, pendulous breasts” ascribed to the narrator’s grandmother in the otherwise promising “Wave-Riding Giants,” about a lonely widower reflecting on the ebbing tide of his life.
A few of the pieces might have been cut altogether, such as the collection’s awkward closer, “Magda’s a Dancer.” Told entirely in dialogue, a riff on two British couples drinking in a rental apartment in downtown L.A., the story lacks heart or real tension, reading instead like an MFA workshop exercise or a hastily cribbed journal entry.
Still, there are near beauties. “A Thunderstorm in Santa Monica” — following a young man who flies to America to visit his distracted lover — captures the contemporary angst and artifice of global long-distance romance.
On the whole, however, O’Riordan’s literary gifts, while on clear display, struggle to deliver a fully satisfying read. Trevor Corkum’s novel The Electric Boy is forthcoming from Doubleday Canada.