"Aperitifs with Mr. Hemingway" by Jonathan Trigell (from Best BritishShort Stories, 2012)

Jonathan Trigell was born in Hertfordshire in 1974. In 2002 he took an MA in creative writing at Manchester University; Boy A, his first novel, was his thesis for that course.
Boy A won the Waverton Award for best first novel of 2004; the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, for best book in the commonwealth by an author under 35; the Italian Edoardo Kihlgren Prize, for a translated novel; and the inaugural World Book Day Prize, for the most discussion worthy novel by a living writer.
Boy A was turned into a film by Cuba Pictures, The Weinstein Co. and Film 4; directed by John Crowley and starring Andrew Garfield and Peter Mullan. It won a total of four Bafta Awards in 2008; the Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and the Jury and Public Prizes at the Dinard Film Festival.
Jonathan's second novel, Cham, was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize.

Somedays you need a short story about an old man deciding if they should (in the words of the story) "do a Hemingway" and some days you don't .   For the days you do, "Aperitifs with Mr. Hemingway" by Jonathan Trigell would be a very good pick.  

The story is told in the first person by a man who served in the Korean War (1950 to 1953) which means he is at least in his late seventies.   The story is in the first person.  He starts out telling us he never was really one for much reading of books.   He read Hemingway at first because his beloved Rosa gave him one of her books.   He kept reading him as he feels Hemingway reduces things down to the basic truths with out a lot of falderal.  To him Hemingway wrote like a man who had been to war.   He said Hemingway's suicide was not a call for help, it was a decision that his life was no longer worth living.  The man, alone, living on a small pension in an estate (housing area for Americans) dominated by gangs of punks with no respect for the elderly or anyone else.  

He likes to go for walks but the punks disrespect him and are more than a little dangerous.  He is not a stranger to gun violence, he killed an enemy soldier in Korea.  The story takes an exciting and unexpected turn when he tells two street punks he wants to buy a gun.  I will not tell more of the plot as it is very interesting.  

I hope to read more by Trigell one day.

"All I Know About Gertrude Stein" by Jeanette Winterson

"All I Know About Gertrude Stein" by Jeanette Winterson  (2011)

I have recently begun to read through The Best British Short Stories 2012.  There are twenty stories in the collection, edited by Nicholas Royle.  I plan to read all the stories in the collection and post on some of them.   (Not posting on a story is not always a sign I did not like it that much, though it might be, it just is a question of time as it takes me just as long to write a post on a short story as it might to read one!)   I will keep a tab of my "fab five" (in no order), just for the fun of it.  I also have two anthologies of best  American short stories and  Best British Short Stories 2011 and I think  I will stage a transatlantic battle.   (So far the UK stories are a good bit better but I am just getting started.)







Top stories (in random order) Reading Life Best of British Short Stories for 2012-
1.  "iAnna" by Will Self
2. "The Heart of Dennis Noble" by Alison Macleod"
3.  "I Arrive First" by  Emma Jane Unsworth
4.  "All I Know About Gertrude Stein" by Jeanette Winterson
5.  "An Appointment with Mr. Hemingway" by Jonathan Trigell (a very good story on which I did not post.)

I have also read and will not be posting on stories by HP Tinker and Robert Shearman.  

I was very happy to see a short story by Jeanette Winterson included in Best British Short Stories 2012.  A quick glance at the author biographies included in the collection reveals she is the most distinguished of the contributors to the anthology.    She is most famous for her first novel,  Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which I posted on sometime ago.   I also read and greatly enjoyed her very creative novel, Powerpoint.  

"All I Know About Gertrude Stein" is a very creatively designed story that draws you in from the start.   It is a story about two women, both on journeys motivated by love.  It starts out with Alice B. Toklas in 1907 who has just arrived in Paris to meet a woman who will become her lifetime love and partner, the famous author,  Gertrude Stein.  The story after the opening paragraph takes us to 2011 and we are on the Eurostar traveling with a woman from London, Louise, also on her way to Paris.  "Louise was traveling alone because she was trying to understand something about love."   Much like the relationship of Alice B. Toklas to Stein, Louise's lover was a much more important person than she was, Louise is defined as the love interest of  a greater in the eyes of the world person.

We learn  good bit about the facts of the life of Toklas and Stein in this wonderful story, it flips back and forth between Louise and them.   Louise's segment is devoted a lot to her reflections on the nature of love.   The thoughts are wonderful and will make you think about your relationships, present, past or hoped for one day.  

Please share your experience with Winterson with us.  

My thanks to Max u for giving me a gift card that allowed me to read and post on this story.


Mel u
The Reading Life
@thereadinglife

"I Arrive First" by Emma Jane Unsworth

"I Arrive First" by Emma Jane Unsworth (2011)

I have recently begun to read through The Best British Short Stories 2012.  There are twenty stories in the collection, edited by Nicholas Royle.  I plan to read all the stories in the collection and post on some of them.   (Not posting on a story is not always a sign I did not like it that much, though it might be, it just is a question of time as it takes me just as long to write a post on a short story as it might to read one!)   I will keep a tab of my "fab five" (in no order), just for the fun of it.  I also have two anthologies of best  American short stories and  Best British Short Stories 2011 and I think  I will stage a transatlantic battle.   (So far the UK stories are a good bit better but I am just getting started.)

Top Five (in random order) Reading Life Best of British Short Stories for 2012-
1.  "iAnna" by Will Self
2. "The Heart of Dennis Noble" by Alison Macleod"
3.  "I Arrive First" by  Emma Jane Unsworth
more to come (I hope!)

Bio from the blog of the author

My name is Emma Jane Unsworth and I live in Manchester, England. My short fiction has been published in various places including The Best British Short Stories 2012 (Salt). I am a columnist for The Big Issue in the North.

My first novel Hungry, the Stars and Everything was published by The Hidden Gem Press in 2011 and won a Betty Trask Award.

"I Arrive First" is a romance fantasy for library lovers.  Reading this story once again made me thing of the great hole in the culture of the giant megacity of 20 million I live in brought about by the lack of public libraries.   One thing libraries are said to be is a very good, hopefully safe for book lovers, often typed cast as shy and romantically backward to meet each other.  This is sort of what Unsworth brilliant and heartwarming story is about.  But it is much more than that, it is about the closing of a loved library and about a life imagined or projected through the titles of books and their beloved content.  I will tell just a bit of the plot of this marvelous totally enjoyable story as I do not want to spoil it for potential readers.  

A young, perhaps college age woman and man have been making eye contact for a good while in a library.  They each feel a strong attraction, or at least the woman narrator of the story feels it is mutual.   They communicate through leaving a carefully selected book title, on a table in the library, that is meant to express their as yet unspoken feelings for each other.   This has been going on for a month now.    She first noticed the man when he was sitting at his library table and he left, facing away from him so others could see it, a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude.   She sees this as an obvious cry for help.  As I read the story I began to wonder how much of this byplay in real and how much the fantasy of the young woman.  She tells the man her name without speaking to him by making sure he sees a copy of Rebecca.  She is in a state of panic as the library will be closed soon and she wants to make real life, or does she, contact with the man.  She sees him what a copy of After You'd Gone and sees it as direct message from him.  They go back and forth with book titles, maybe the man is also interested.   The interaction goes on and on, fired up by the closing of the library.   I will leave the rest of the story untold so as not to spoil it for potential readers.

"I Arrive First" is a very smart story, it leaves you wondering if this is just the woman's projections or if it is real.  It is also an account of how any communication from a possible lover is fraught with meaning.  Anyone who has ever fancied a stranger in a library will relate to this story well.  I greatly enjoyed read this wonderful story and hope to read more of the work of Unworth one day.


You can learn more about her work from her blog, fall and fall again.

I owe my thanks to Max u for giving me an Amazon gift card that made reading and posting on this story possible.


Mel u
The Reading Life
@thereadinglife

"iAnna" by Will Self

"iAnna" by Will Self  (2011)

Stories in Best British Short Stories  2012 I have read so far

"Alice in Time and Space and Various Major Cities" by HP Tinker-no post-fun story
"The Heart of Dennis Noble" by Alison Macleod-very good work

Will Self (London, UK, 1961) is the author of nine novels and five collections of short stories.  His most recent novel, Umbrella,  has been short listed for this years Man Booker Prize.   I have been provided a copy of Umbrella by the publisher and hope to read it soon.    I was really glad to see one of his short stories included in the anthology, Best British Short Stories 2012.   

"iAnna" is a very clever, very creative story centering on the psychiatric care of a woman in her early twenties who thinks she is an Ipad.   I really like my own Ipad so this story really meant a lot to me.   Besides Anna, there are two other people in the story, one the staff psychiatrist at small run down hospital in Middlesex in the UK and the other a retired  psychiatrist he calls in to consult with on the treatment of Anna.

The story is a brilliant satire of how gadgets are taking over our lives.   It totally captures the Ipad experience.

Anna sees the world before her as if it were on the screen of her Ipad.  She cannot experience direct human contact.  Self does a wonderful job of showing how Anna sees the world and he does this just perfectly.   If the doctor wants to communicate with her he presses his own head as if he were tapping on the Ipad screen.

The idea behind this story is great.   It is really a lot of fun to read and gadgets are taking over our lives, for better or worse.   "iAnna" from the title on is just a lot of fun to read.   I hope to read Umbrella this year and will post on it.

"just call me iCarmilla"

I offer my thanks to Max u for giving me a gift card that allowed me to read this story.

Mel u

"The Heart of Denis Noble" by Alison Macleod

"The Heart of Denis Noble" by Alison MacLeod (2011)

"Every part of a story contain every other part"

"My ability to dowse for the voice of a story or novel, to hear it and trust in it, feels like a gift. Literary craft and technique are vital. Research is often crucial. But the voice of a story is its essence or spirit. I'm its conduit. I'm both less and more myself as I write. At its most powerful, a story, like a fire, eats up all the air in the room. Its life is perhaps the thing that makes me feel alive."  Alison MacLeod

"The Heart of Denis Noble" by Alison MacLeod (UK) is a simply marvelous work of  the story teller's craft by a writer of transcendent artistry and brilliance.   By a series of skip backs in time she tells the life of Denis Noble, a Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology.   Macleod takes us from inside his mother's womb, to his days with his working class parents, through his college days and his first romances to his stream of consciousness as he goes under in preparation for heart replacement surgery.   If the story were simply told in a linear fashion it would be a great story but what makes it so powerful is the way Macleod leaps back in forth not so much in time, anybody can do that, but in Noble's  changing memory of the past as he ages.   We are following his consciousness as he travels back in forth while under the influence of the medication he is given to get him through his operation.   As the story begins, we learn of the heart that is flying on its way to him in an air ambulance.   We learn the procedures for transplanting a heart.   MacLead uses great details to make us feel we are in the operating room.   We then learn through the meandering reflections on his past of Denis what is done with a sheep's heart after it is butchered. He worked at a slaughter house in his  young days.  We learn a little bit about how he became a famous Professor but a lot is left out, a master's touch.  We reflect on the differences between the jobs of the surgeons and the
"slaughter-men"   The scenes describing the butchery of animals, the occupation of his younger days are an amazing counter point to the operating room.   Going deep enough we know the skills to butcher a sheep and remove its heart intact are historically linked to heart transplants.   In the long ago the heart was removed from sacrificial victims by priests, now the hooded doctors are the priests.

As he begins to drift off under the anesthesiology treatment, he begins to hear the music he selected for his operation, the second movement from Schubert's Piano Trio in E-Flat Major and he thinks of his days as a student in bed with a woman, he hears her voice in his ear

But when her fingers find him beneath the sheet, they surprise him with a catheter, and he has to shut his eyes against the tears, against the absurdity of age."

There are a lot of wonderful things in this story.   I do not wish to give the full plot as I hope my readers will one day experience this story for themselves.   We are there in 1940, he was four years old, when he returns to perhaps his real first memory, when his family house in England was hit by a German bomb.    Of course this memory is not a pure memory but one reconstructed from years of retelling, first my his parents then by himself.   This story is very much about the ways we remember and reconstruct out past and how small past moments never leave us.

There are some very interesting remembered conversation between Denis and his girl friend while in college.  She was a literature major.   If one were to attempt to "deconstruct" this story I think in the remark made by the girlfriend to Denis (he remembers best the conversations he had with her while in bed) MacLeod has given us a strong clue - "Every part of a story contain every other part".  There are several distinct subsections of the story, in the operating room, Denis as a child, working in the slaughter house, being with his family and in college.   Each of these stories contains the basic thematic elements (not an expression I like but I will use it) and each informs the other.  

Only three and half real time hours pass in this story but we see sixty plus years of his life, we also skip over huge parts.  On a personal note I felt a shock of recognition  when as he comes back to consciousness after the operation his wife says to him "You came back to me".  Two years ago I went into a coma for several minutes with zero visible brain activity after three cardiac arrests caused by a horrible case of pneumonia.   The doctors told my wife to pray as there was little they could do and that almost no one ever comes back after what I have been through.   I emerged from it and the first words my wonderful wife said was "You have come back to me".    I shared this with my wife and we both felt the real power and stark verisimilitude of this.

"The Heart of Denis Noble" is a flawless story.   We travel deeply into the consciousness of the central character.   We know his core experiences in life.   We see them linked to instances of violence as in the bombing and the butchery of the animals or sexuality.

There is much more in this story and I think anyone who reads it will be glad they did.

I wish to thanks Max u for providing me with an Amazon gift certificate which allowed me to read this story.

There is a very interesting interview with Alison MacLead here

She has a fascinating article in The  Guardian in which she tells us of her ten top short stories.

Information on MacLeod's collection of short stories Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction can be found here

Official Author Biography

Alison MacLeod grew up in Montreal and Halifax. She is the author of two novels, The Changeling(1996) and The Wave Theory of Angels (2005). Her work has won Writers' Awards from both the Canada Council and Arts Council England. In 2008, she was won the U.K.'s Society of Authors' Olive Cook Award for Short Fiction, while her story collection Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction was long-listed for the International Frank O'Connor Award in that same year. In the UK, it was also named as one of the 'Top Ten Books to Talk About in 2009' in association with World Book Day. Her short stories have been widely published and broadcast in Canada and the U.K. by Prospect, the Ottawa Citizen, Virago, Bloombury, London Magazine and the BBC. Alongside her writing, she is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester in England. She lives in Brighton and returns home to Canada twice a year.

I read this story in The Best British Short Stories 2012,edited by Nicholas Royle.

I look forward to reading much more of Alison MacLeod's work in the near and distant future.


Mel u