Random Acts of Optimism- A Short Story Collection by Alison Well - 2023 - 15 Short Stories-114 Pages

 I find posting upon a collection of Short stories more challenging than upon a novel.  I loved this debut collection by Alison Wells, some of the works have ties to the Gothic and Paranormal tradition but even the spectral figures epitomise human quandries.

I will post on four of the 15 stories, quoting enough to give you a feel for the author's beautiful prose.

"Bog Bodies"

"into the future, she wrenches herself out of the sucking bog, its desperate mouth fastened round her, the squelch and pop as it releases her like regurgitation. Under the earth she stretched her fragile fingers against the immovable soil, made of living remains but dead, dead weight. Everything she could not do. Now she pushes out, presses her fingerprints against the sagging soggy earth, she makes her mark. The bog bounces back, erases her. She rises up, a ragged mast on the high sea, weatherwhipped and pliant. Under her tanned leathery skin, her bones are frail, a luminescentlattice, roped loosely by sinew. She feels the wind behind her, filling up her sails, she readies herself for flight. Above her head a heron makes determined for hill-framed shining water." 

If Sheridan le Fanu, the great 19th century Irish writer of classic Gothic, Horror and Ghost novels and short stories were to have the across time pleasure of reading "Bog Bodies" I think he would be gratified another Irish writer has added a marvelous story to the tradition. This story is a caution to bullies while celebrating near neolithic tradition.

"Through time she feels the weight of the bog, the strata of eons pressing upon her, the thin prehistoric cries of the ritually slain, outcasts and villains." From Bog Bodies 

"Last Tango with Dinosaurs"

tt was awkward about the dinosaurs. No-one knew what to do with the Brontosaurus in the park. On Wednesday a child digging to China on the beach found dinosaur eggs, still warm. On Friday a Pleisosaurus was spotted lunging at the hydrofoil in Ryde. By the following week, the the Pterodactyls had killed some seagulls at Shanklin.  And now the tea dancing was cancelled ... A plant-eater had jeopardized the floral arrangements at the local hall and all activities were suspended, including the Senior Tango competition." 

Set on The Isle of Wight

"Last Tango with Dinosaurs" is an hilarious account of what happens when an attempt is made to turn a proliferation of dinosaurs into a tourist bonanza. This is too enjoyable cinematic story for me to reveal more of the plot.

"Without the Light Pollution You Can See the Stars"

"He was always on the lookout for wonder, ever since he was young, always, long before he finally moved out here with Emily, Amy and Hannah. He’d always been beguiled by the romanticism of stars, their beautiful mystery, though they were so far away, or dead already. And yet the stars suggested some great white plain, beyond the dark."

This story had a deeply personal impact on me, I am not a poet as is the lead character but my life was transformed and I was opened to more of the join and pain of the world when i joined the family of my wife and her three daughters.  This was twenty years ago.  I do not easily bond with people and her way to early passing last year has brought on both darkness and light.

"The Spaceman has his Tea"

"For a short time after he got back everyone wanted his story; daytime TV, popular science journals, the local papers, all looking for sound bites from space. He found himself within a great hubbub of rhetoric, voracious vernacular. The first time he saw the Earth, that bright globe in blackness, he’d expected the symphony of violins, the music of the sphere. But all there was only silence."

One, as I perceive, the themes of the stories in this collection, is how alone we can become among others by transformative events. For the space man it was his trip around the earth in a spacecraft. It is like the rest of his time on earth will just be marking time.

Some press reviews

"A genuinely marvellous collection. There’s a crystalline quality to the prose that at times dazzles and at others leaves you gasping for breath, but more than anything it’s the compulsive nature of the storytelling that will have readers unable to put this collection down. Alison Wells, a very fine writer and clearly one who has honed her craft to mastery, deserves a broad and enthusiastic audience. Random Acts of Optimism ought to do the trick.”  – Billy O’Callaghan, author of Life Sentences

'There’s an incredibly sensual precision to Wells’ sentences – nobody writes like Alison Wells – her stories sizzle, she’s an unsentimental yet compassionate documenter of humanity, whose stories are never what you might expect. She has an unusual and imaginative approach, a wide range, and a canny wisdom. The tragic and comic are not just juxtaposed, they wrap around each other – Wells is a unique voice, and this collection is one to treasure. Fans of the work of Lorrie Moore and Lucia Berlin will love this collection.” – Niamh Boyce, Award Winning Author of The Herbalist and Her Kind

Reading these 15 is stories one at a time will definitely give you an wonderful thought provoking interlude in your day.

 I ended up wishing there were at least 30.

Alison Wells was born in London, raised in Kerry and lives in Bray, near Dublin with her husband and four children. A graduate of Communication Studies and Psychology, she is now an enthusiastic librarian. Alison has been awarded residencies at Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry. Her literary short fiction has been Pushcart prize nominated and shortlisted for Hennessy New Irish Writing, Bridport, BBC Opening Lines and Bray Literary Festival. Writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Lonely Crowd, Crannóg, UK National Flash Fiction anthologies Jawbreakers and Scraps and New Island/RTÉ Arena’s New Planet Cabaret. Eat! was highly commended in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2019. In 2020 she was a finalist with The Exhibit of Held Breaths. Her Head Above Water blog explores creativity and resilience.

Mel Ulm