Eley Williams has written a collection of short stories concerned with aspects of language and how it is used, or not used, to communicate and / or to convey feelings. There are seventeen short stories in this collection and three very different stories were used for study in the course.
Smote (or when I find I cannot kiss you in front of a print by Bridget Riley) (pp 45-54). Bridget Riley is a British artist who, from the 1960s, painted in a style known as Op Art - lots of lines, circles or swirls. The painting in this story is Movement in Squares. Viewing such paintings can be disorienting to some viewers and this is the affect that occurs when two women visit a galley and one tries to summon the courage to kiss her partner but is completely distracted by the effects of the painting. The way the painting distracts the viewer is conveyed in one sentence which is six pages long. The effect of reading this passage provided me with a headache as I could envisage the affect that it had on the narrator.
Concision (pp 69-74) describes a long distance phone call where the person at the other end hangs up. We are only shown the thoughts and feelings of the person on our end of the line as they examine the attributes of the physical phone (long before mobiles) and how these may add to the finality of the end of the relationship.
The physical description of the phone consumes the attention of the narrator: 'The body of the telephone is black and squat and it is shiny. ... The table on which my squat-liquorice shiny telephone sits has been in position by the window for so long that its legs have notched crop circles into the carpet. I tried to work out the total number of hours I must have sat in this precise position over the years. I must have perched on the arm of this sofa by the phone like this for weeks, making sure not to struggle or draw lines in the sand.' (p 71)
Spines (pp 149-158) portrays the reactions of the members of a family who find a small hedgehog swimming in the pool of their holiday house in France. The actions, or lack of actions, of the three humans in this story provoked a strong reaction from those taking the course.
There are several other stories about animals in this collection - a rat in Mischief (pp 137-148), a whale stranded on a beach - Bulk (pp 107-120) and another story concerning a person's reaction to finding a bee in a bedroom - Bs (pp 55-58).
The Alphabet (pp 11-24) deals with the thoughts of a person with Aphasia and the awareness of the encroachment of the condition on their life. Platform (pp 121-126) also looks back at the end of a relationship but in this case examines objects found in a photo taken the previous year producing an onflow of ideas and wordplay.
Most of the stories in this book are written in the first person leaving the reader to often read between the lines to work out what may be going on. All in all this is an interesting and thought provoking collection of short stories on the challenges of communication as well as different ways of using words. It will be interesting to read other works by this author in the future.
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