Buy this book from Amazon UKTo edit a short story collection is a strange, bittersweet experience. It is an immense privilege to be asked to tempt first-rate authors into pondering a particular topic or fit into a theme. It's wonderful when they interpret the invitation in unexpectedly satisfying ways. It's awesome to engage with them in detail on their texts, mildly surprising when they think your presumptious cavils are in fact correct, chasteningly instructive when they think they're rubbish and ignore them.
It's extraordinary to make acquaintance with writers, usually sent by an agent but sometimes arriving out of the blue, who you've never heard of and find they've given you a gem. But it's saddening when you have to let writers down gently because their stories just aren?t good enough: even worse when they are great but can't fit into the book's format: quite dreadful when you've previously accepted them and then hear from the publishers that they won't fit in. The whole process makes me admire all the more the good editor who does this all the time for a living: conversely it increases my impatience with the bad editor.
I could therefore empathise with Rowena Edlin-White's experience in compiling this very fine collection. This is one of ten books to celebrate both Five Leaves' tenth birthday and contemporary writing in the Midlands. The children's and young adult writers represented here were asked to provide stories, not necessarily set in the Midlands, which showed young people on the cusp between childhood and adulthood dealing with the shaping events which opened up the adult world to them and started the process of achieving self-knowledge to enable them to deal with it. The sheer variety of the results underline my point about unexpected, wonderful interpretations.
There's not a single dud in the collection. All except two, Pauline Chandler's Newts and Linda Kempton's The Blue Madonna, are first person narratives. The opening story, Chris d'Lacey's Drive, concerning a joy-ride which seems to be going seriously wrong - and does, though in an ingeniously unexpected way - is brief, almost shocking in its effect.
It's noteworthy that all three male writers contribute shorter, more - how shall I say? - muscular stories. Nick Mann's title story is an account of a clever piece of threatened blackmail to take revenge on a paedophile teacher: David Belbin's Waking Early, West Kirby is even more disturbing: the near-murder of the philandering married lover of Kathy's mother.
The other stories are usually longer, subtler, almost ruminative. I wish I could mention them all. There's a satisfying revenge in Sylvia Hall's Just for a Laugh. Berlie Doherty provides Strawberry Wine, a riveting extract from a novel that I now can't wait to read. Newts has a neat circularity. There are two almost gothic, Bronte-inspired stories. Bette Paul's Thaw is reminiscent of Jane's first meeting with Rochester, though here the dog belongs to the girl. The Blue Madonna is a subtle conflation of past and present: its themes of deaths years ago and the linking narrative of the old nurse Zillah confirm an inspiration from Wuthering Heights.
This is a regional compilation and, as one might expect, each story has its tangible sense of place. Other contributors include Gwen Grant, BK Mahal, Lynn Markham, Caroline Pitcher and Gill Vickery. That list alone indicates that its Midlands roots don?t prevent In the Frame from becoming a universal book. A fine collection.
Buy this book from Amazon UK