Short Story – Cristina Sanders' blog

Foster – book review

Foster, by Clarie Keegan

‘I’d better hit the road,’ Da says. ‘What hurry is on you?’ Kinsella says. ‘The daylight is burning, and I’ve yet the spuds to spray.’ We’re in Ireland again, back with the wonderful Claire Keegan and her intimate descriptions of all the small things that make up a life. Another top class novella from a writer fast becoming my favourite. Here a girl is sent from a struggling household to stay with an older couple, her mother’s people, on a Wexford farm. Her mother is pregnant again and unable to cope, her siblings run wild. Her dad drops her off and hits the road.

So Late in the Day – book review

So Late in the Day, by Claire Keegan

Cathal is one of those blokes a friend might go out with and say, you know, he’s OK. He’s got a job, not bad looking. We meet Cathal looking out of his office window where the day is good: sunshine; birds; the smell of cut grass; “so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.” Cathal is writing rejection letters for bursary applicants. And there we have it, Keegan gives us the heads up that this is not a happily-ever-after. In this poignant novella, the fact that Cathal is not one of life’s winners is revealed through the world around him.

Pretty Ugly – book review

Pretty Ugly, by Kirsty Gunn

On the strength of this book I am going to build a new bookshelf in the spare bedroom, just for short stories. For guests who stay a couple of nights and might otherwise run off with an unputdownable novel. Let them fill their early mornings or sleepless nights with Kirsty Gunn. That’s what short stories are for; they’re probably not designed to be consumed all at once like I did these. I couldn’t help it. These short stories are terrific.

Ash – book review

Ash, by Louise Wallace

I saw a cartoon recently of a woman at the sink with a mop in one hand, a baby in the other, two tugging at her skirts and her man behind saying something like, “You’re not the fun loving woman I married.” Had me chortling with the laughter of ironic truth. In the same vein of misunderstanding, you may think Wallace’s book, Ash, is about the ash that has spewed from the volcano to cover everything and how the townspeople cope with this disaster. But it’s not. It’s about being a mother. And it’s bloody good.

Pātea Boys – Book review

Pātea Boys, Ngāti Pātea, by Airana Ngarewa

I want to give this book to all the manu-ing bros and cuzzies who are living overseas to remind them what home feels like on the skin. Listen to me, I’m not even Māori. Airana Ngarewa just has that effect on me.

These short stories in Pātea Boys (Ngāti Pātea in the te reo version) are mostly funny yarns, bookmarked by vaping aunties, drenched with boys leaping into water for the sheer hell of it. Airana makes Pātea sound like the best place to spend a childhood, as timelessly cool as its number one hit: Poi E which has taken up residence on loop in my head and threatening to break through at inappropriate moments (actually, perhaps no moment is inappropriate for Poi E). There’s a tint of rose-coloured nostalgia cloaking the old town: harmless fun, boys besting each other: the meanest manu, the fastest race, the most near-death experiences, best prank. But it’s not all a laugh. We go back to a young girl running light-footed through forest in the dark, an ancestor of these kids, one who slips past the colonial forces to light a signal fire. There’s a sentient historic waka sunk on the river bank finally rescued from the mud after over a century by a couple of idiotic, bantering kids. Life is not all dive bombs and kai, but these are the things remembered.

Small Things Like These – book review

Small Things like These, by Claire Keegan

The Magdalen laundries, tool of the Catholic Church and Irish state, was closed down in 1996, in abject disgrace. In 2013 the Irish government gave a much belated apology to the women who had suffered in these prisons of forced labour. Women who had ‘fallen’ and needed to be removed from society. Some thirty thousand women are estimated to have been incarcerated, their babies adopted out. A shocking number of babies died.

Fallen. That word. Young women ‘fell’ pregnant. Their fault for being a bit clumsy, tripping up because they weren’t paying attention.

Subversive Christmas Nativity

A panto for Christmas at home

A girl looked up from a manger one day
T’was round about Christmas, the sky fully grey
She thought about elves, far, far away
Who’d spend lives making presents on minimum pay

It goes downhill from there. If you like your nativity straight, best not click on the link to our Subversive Christmas Nativity featuring Cinderella, elves, Santa, Jesus. If you have extra guests you could throw in an ass or two.
Have Yourselves a Merry Little Christmas
Here’s our Yuletide Play.

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