SHORT STORIES
IMOGEN LYCETT GREEN
THE DOLL-MASTER AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR by Joyce Carol Oates (Head of Zeus £18.99) Even the title fills me with fear. U. S. literary goddess Joyce Carol Oates, mistress of suspense and author of more than 70 books, adds a hyphen and thereby tilts our understanding of two simple words.
And as expected, the title story sets the tone for this disturbing — no, lethal — collection. Oates inhabits the mind of a toddler as easily as that of a 60-plus bookseller, and seems to relish the use and abuse of snakes, guns and poison by a series of perpetrators. Mental anguish abides deep within Oates’s protagonists, yet with a breathtaking control of the narrative, she manages to inject humour into their stories.
Some of the villains get their comeuppance. Others don’t, and we are left feeling uneasy, wondering where in our own lives dark characters such as these may be lurking.
An unsettling read worth every resulting jump in the night. HOT LITTLE HANDS by Abigail Ulman (Penguin £8.99) The small-town girls in these nine stories look both back to pony camp with wistfulness and ahead to adulthood with flushed excitement. ramona, elise and the rest are experimenting. They have boyfriends and make love on single beds while their mothers feed younger siblings downstairs. They escape to clubs at night, taunt predatory stepfathers and fantasise about science teachers.
In sensual, enveloping prose, Melbourneborn Ulman completely captures that child/ woman moment when a teenage imagination is alive with sexual possibility. Ulman’s dialogue is real, and her characters seduce each other to a natural rhythm.
Buy this for your daughter, but read it yourself. Whatever age you are, these alluring girls will take you right back to the place where your lust and confusion began. A brilliant debut. THE HIGH PLACES by Fiona McFarlane (Sceptre £18.99) ANOTHER exciting writer from Australia is Fiona McFarlane, whose highly acclaimed 2014 novel, The night Guest, was described as ‘ an unnerving debut that explores the recesses of a disarrayed mind’.
Similarly, The high Places, McFarlane’s first short story collection, digs deep. In her distinct and unusual voice — the disconcerting tone and dry humour are reminiscent of Margaret Atwood or Valerie Martin — McFarlane examines relationships with uncomfortable clarity and insight, observing the subtext of human behaviour while acknowledging a mysterious power beyond the reality we think we know.
The natural world is alive in these stories and miracles abound: parachutists land in a country town, there is an accident on a country road, a scientist speaks to Darwin’s ghost.
not every reader will appreciate McFarlane’s penchant for the surprise ending, but no one could dispute that a new talent has emerged on the Australian literary scene.