Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

 

“POCKET MONEY & other stories” by Vivienne Lingard (“Artistry Publishing”, $NZ37.99); “DETACHMENT THEORY” by Richard Woolley (“Author House”, $NZ35)

Recently, I was having a conversation with a publisher and I said that self-published books tend to be vanity books, especially when publication is so expensive. You have to be wealthy to pay for publication yourself. Self-published books, I said, are usually inferior to those that have been accepted and published by mainstream publishers who have taken a manuscript, put it through an editing process, and paid all the expenses of publication.

Not so, said the publisher. The fact is that in New Zealand now, mainstream publishers are running shorter lists than they used to, especially for fiction, and being self-published is the only option for many writers of real merit. The distinction between mainstream publishing and self-publishing is now very blurred – not least by the fact that many commercial printers now style themselves as “publishing” companies.

Actually I’d already understood this from my regular reviewing of New Zealand poetry. Of course established publishers are publishing, at their expense, much of the poetry that is worth reading. But I’ve noticed recently that many small independent presses are also producing notable work, some of it clearly being self-published. I was also aware that one of the finalists at this year’s Ockham Awards was a self-published book.

Vivienne Lingard’s Pocket Money & other stories has no publisher’s logo on the title page, but on the verso small print tells us it was produced by “Artistry Publishing”. I am therefore assuming it is self-published and produced by a commercial printer. But here’s my main point. In terms of printing and production it’s an excellent piece of work; and in terms of its contents, the stories are often engaging, certainly entertaining and sometimes insightful, many having interesting plots. This is a very capacious collection of short stories – 21 to be precise, over 300 pages. To give you the statistics, 12 of the stories are told in the third-person and 9 are told in the first person. Modes of narration mean a lot and I note that most of the first-person stories are told by women but there are a few told by blokes. Vivienne Lingard tells us in a closing note that she has experienced “living in many countries and within different cultures”. Therefore, while most of these stories are set in New Zealand, there are also stories set in London, Delhi, New York, Japan, Italy, and Prague. Dare I say that most of them seem a tourist’s-eye-view rather than deep experience of the local culture?

When it comes to short stories we are, even now, aware of the great short-story schism that was established well over a century ago.

In this corner, there are those sting-in-the-tail stories, entertaining things which wowed readers by ending with a surprise twist. Guy de Maupassant has sometimes been associated with this school because one or two of his best-known stories ended with a twist – but this libels the man. The great majority of his stories do not end with a twist. The real sting-in-the-tail culprit was William Sydney Porter, who adopted the pen-name O.Henry. His surprise endings became the standard model for stories published in popular magazines.

In the opposite corner are the masters of stories that were “all middle” – not so much ingenious plots as studies of character; stories concerned with psychological states; stories which searched the human condition. Consider James Joyce’s short-story collection Dubliners. Consider nearly everything by Katherine Mansfield. But above all consider Anton Chekhov who virtually founded the character study school of short stories. It goes without saying that these were truly stories for adults, compared with which sting-in-the-tale stories were merely trick anecdotes.

Now why am I giving this lecture while considering Vivienne Lingard’s Pocket Money & other stories? Because, far too often, Lingard’s stories begin as credible, adult stories, frequently based on familial tensions, but then fade away as an improbable happy ending or surprise ending takes over. It is as if the author is sabotaging her own work. To give some examples. The story “Izzy” presents us with an upper-middle-class situation in London. Husband is a busy architect; wife wants to write graphic novels. It shapes up quite credibly as an account of a marriage under stress… and then… and then…and then… happy and glib surprise ending. [Please note I’m not a cad and will not give away what the surprises are]. Or consider the story “The Real Delhi”. Professional wife is attending a conference in Delhi. Husband has tagged along and decides to wander about the city. But he gets lost and panics. Lingard’s writing is excellent up to this point. The husband’s fear, bewilderment and sense of alienness in a foreign city are dramatized convincingly… and then… and then…and then… another quick and glib ending. Thus too in “Collections”, which begins as a believable character-study of a man with cerebral palsy; and “Cut Grass” – cut out the ending and it’s a careful portrait of a young girl for the first time responding tentatively to the opposite sex. But alas, both stories give us a neat happy ending. Sorry, but this is in the popular magazine category. I could cite other stories that collapse in the same way after a fair opening – “The Lost Scent”, “A Small Tattoo”, “Chiaroscuro” and “Ways of Riding a Storm” (the last solving a complex family problem with sudden forgiveness and understanding).

I assure you I’m not being a grouch in all this. I am not opposed to happy endings per se. In real life, things can work out for the best – but in stories, the happy ending has to be earned, not suddenly sprung upon us. Some of Lingard’s best stories do justify their upbeat conclusions, or at least have a degree of ambiguity in the way they end. Thus “Truth, Lies and Everything in Between”, “The Honeymoon” and “First Aid”.  And there are some stories that stay steadily with an adult perception. “Walls Can Speak” is one of Lingard’s best, and longer than most of her stories. Though told in the first person it is a complex tale involving many members of a family, but centring on two elderly women, sisters, living together and coping with the life-blighting experience that has shaped one of them. Topping this is the author’s very best story “Progress” where two women weather a harsh winter in neighbouring houses. One of them is hoping for companionship with her neighbour, but is gradually rebuffed. As it happens, there is a surprise at the end, but it does not topple the story over or dominate it. It is the hopeful woman’s mind that is convincingly laid bare.

I closed this book having enjoyed many of the stories but also frustrated by many. The writing talent is certainly there, but the author has to work on development of story – or perhaps dare to give us “only middle”.

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Richard Woolley’s novel Detachment Theory was published by AuthorHouse, an American outfit which advertises itself with the slogan “Publish your own book”. In other words, this is another self-published book.

Detachment Theory is a sort of detective story. Joy Manville is a steadfast Kiwi journalist who has some Maori blood – which allows the author to squeeze in some otherwise irrelevant local colour. Joy’s husband Stephen is an academic, an ex-pat Englishman now Professor of Film Studies at Auckland University. On line, Joy starts getting upsetting anonymous messages telling her that her husband is possibly a paedophile or a serial killer. Then hubby goes missing. Joy starts looking into hubby’s personal files and discovers some upsetting things about Stephen’s earlier life in a posh boarding school in England. Well, don’t we all know that posh English boarding schools are always hives of thuggery, buggery, sodomy and sadism? At any rate, that’s the stereotype Richard Woolley goes with. Maybe, thinks Joy, Stephen could have been involved in this.

As always, I do not disclose the twists and intended surprises of new detective stories,  but I can note that Joy’s investigation takes her to England where she can interrogate people who knew Stephen when he was a schoolboy. En route, there is a ferocious storm at sea, which kills a couple of important characters, and there is much play about an aristocratic house which seems to have come out of the movie Rebecca (creaks in the night; what dark memories dwell here? etc.). For the record, Richard Woolley used to be a documentary film-maker in Britain, and I wonder if he saw storm and old-dark-house as possible cinematic images for a possible film.

I’m not saying Woolley’s plot isn’t serviceable – after all, wife trying to find out the truth of her suspect husband has been used in quite a few good thrillers. But I am saying that Detachment Theory is often presented laboriously. When Joy makes a visit from Auckland to Northland, Woolley has to give us a travelogue of nearly every place she passes, as if he didn’t want to throw away his research notes. At least three times in this 393-page text, there are conversations in which an interviewee gives us minute information about what nasty thing happened in the past, most improbably and at twice the length they should have been. Things are eventually sorted out satisfactorily – what happened to Stephen in his youth and who was sending Joy the upsetting messages – but again, the unwinding of the plot takes an awfully long time. One can’t help feeling that a good editor for a mainstream [not-self-publishing] publisher would have trimmed off a lot of the redundant fat.

Then there are the stereotypes. I understand that Richard Woolley is English by birth, New Zealander by adoption, so he should know both countries. But his Kiwi character, Joy, is a jolly caricature – a straight-forward, no-nonsense character who speaks her mind colloquially as, apparently, all Kiwis do. By contrast, all the people she meets in England are toffee-nosed, upper-class prats, snobbish and condescending. Does the English Upper Crust delight in mimicking and ridiculing Kiwi and Aussie accents? Maybe, but not all that often surely. Throw in an oleaginous parson who might have a taste for young boys and you really are in cliché land.

Richard Woolley has a lot of good ideas, but I think a guiding hand, by which I mean a good publisher’s editor, could have shaped it into a more truly adult novel.