I am a fan of the short story. I read them.
I write them. I have no doubt they are here to stay and will continue to be
published. I don’t buy into the idea that the short form is an endangered
species, and here’s why.
In our busy twenty-first century lives, the
short story is just the right length to fit into those brief moments when we
stop and catch our breath between our daily responsibilities. The short story,
regardless of whether it is five hundred or five thousand words long, can slot
comfortably into these spaces. We all like to finish things, and being able to
start and finish a story in one sitting is satisfying. Where a novel takes an
extended commitment of concentration and time, the short story asks much less
of you, yet offers so much in return.
Done well, a short story will grab you by
the scruff of the neck and press you hard up against life, in all its beauty
and ugliness. Andy Kissane’s collection, “The Swarm”, did just that. The
opening story, “In My Arms”, deals with the loss of a child – the most painful
grief imaginable – yet there is light and hope at the conclusion of the story.
By cleverly linking the first and last stories, Kissane brings the reader full
circle, creating a feeling of completion.
The last story, “A Mirror to the World”, stayed
with me long after I had read that final sentence and closed the book. “In My
Arms” was equally as affecting, though in a different way, as if it had taken
an alternate route to my heart. Both stories are filled with sadness and loss,
with some of the worst experiences the world can present to us. The actions and
reactions of the characters are to be expected given the situations they have
been written into.
One difference I felt between the two
stories was the way I read them, the way I felt
while reading them. With “In My Arms”, I had the sense of looking down and
watching the events unfold, of being ‘apart from’, rather than ‘immersed in’, the
story. A detached observer, though the sadness still reached me.
The opposite was true of “A Mirror to the
World” – which is what most writers do with their writing; show the reader a
reflection of the world around them. I experienced this story more closely,
intimately. This may, in part, have been the form the story took, which was a
writer (Kissane) writing about a writer, writing. This can be tedious when done
badly or for no real reason, but I felt Kissane knew exactly what he was doing.
By structuring the story in this way, he has helped the reader take it in less
quickly. By slowing us down, he has allowed us to digest the tragedy in bites,
rather than choke on its intensity.
The difference in the way I experienced
these two particular stories could simply have been the order in which I read
them. When I read the first story, Kissane was a author that was new to me. By
the last story, I was more familiar with the writer and his style; this may explain
why I felt more immersed in the final story of the collection. Also, knowing
the book was coming to an end, perhaps I wanted to savour that final story,
like the last spoonful of desert at the end of a good meal.
The character M. Chagall in “The Illusive
Tenant” was particularly interesting to me. Though he was not a major player in
the story, the front story at least, he
plays such a large part within the context of it. His surrealist art leaches
out into the fabric of the story until the story itself becomes a written
version of surrealism. It was surprising and entertaining. For me, this story stood
on its own, spot lit, within the collection.
