“In Praise of Radical Fish” - A Short Story by Alison Macleod - From her collection All the Beloved Ghosts - 2018

“In Praise of Radical Fish” - A Short Story by Alison Macleod - From her collection All the Beloved Ghosts - 2018

Gateway to Alison Macleod on The Reading Life 

To anyone looking for a collection of short stories to help get you through quarantine, I highly recommend All the Beloved Ghosts by Alison Macleod.  

It is often said reading fiction helps develops empathy, allowing us to see the world as those different in important ways from us.In this story I developed empathy for three young men who were planning a terrorist attack killing people at random in support of their version of radical Islamic ideology.  

The story is set in Brighton Beach, an English beach

 front resort town.  Our narrator, a young man born in the UK to Middle Eastern parents, fancies him self as radicalized.  He and two friends of similar backgrounds are waiting on a phone call to preform a suicide mission.  He admits he is having a problem keep his friends focused. 

“It was the Bank Holiday weekend, and I had coaxed Omar and Hamid to Brighton from Peterborough on the promise of a pre-jihad team-building weekend. If we could maintain our anger there, I told them, we could maintain it anywhere. Except I was the weak link. I still had to find the flame within. On Brighton Pier, while Omar and Hamid brooded like ayatollahs, I struggled with an embarrassing excess of good cheer. The day was bright, the tide was high. At the shooting gallery I managed to take out an entire row of ducks – only to spoil everything by returning to my brothers bearing cuddly toys.”

His friend Hassid, all are 19, is a student of Islamic philosophy.  He is the one the recruiter will contact and instruct.  Their other friend Omar is mad at his father, a dealer in dried fruit.  None of them have a sound reason to become terrorists.  Their degree of commitment varies but they would lose face to each other if they backed out.  There is very entertaining encounter between our narrator and a young English woman working in a food place in a mall.  This will come back at the end of the story combined with a delightful play on words.

We tag along with the three young men as they wait for the recruiter’s call.  MacLeod takes us along as they spend what they think maybe their last day.  We go along as they visit an aquarium, I learned where the story title came from.

In a brilliant touch the narrator quotes The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám. His friends don’t recognize the lines and he tells them it is from an ancient Persian poem.  The irony is it is mostly the creation of a 19th century Englishman, Edward Fitzgerald.

I very much enjoyed the story.

I look forward to reading much more of the work of Alison Macleod.

Alison MacLeod is a novelist and short story writer. Her most recent book, the story collection 'All the Beloved Ghosts', was shortlisted for The 2018 Edge Hill Prize for best story collection in the UK and Ireland. It was a 'Best Book of 2017' for the Guardian, and a finalist for Canada’s 2017 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. 

Her website has a detailed bio.    http://www.alison-macleod.com/

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