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Junior
Puffin
Paperback £4.99
ISBN: 0141315059
Reviewed by Dennis Hamley
[Armadillo 6.2 Summer 2004]
Tony Bradman's many short story collections always seem to draw the best out of his contributors. This latest, an anthology tackling the sensitive theme of race, is probably the most powerful that he has compiled. There are eleven stories and, because Bradman is more generous in his word allowance than most compilers of story collections, all are substantial, meaty, with space to develop their themes properly. In their different settings and genres they illuminate many aspects in unexpected, unfamiliar ways: for example Siobhan Dowd's øThe Pavee and the BufferÓ, about Irish tinkers, a treatment of prejudice against travellers at first surprising, then all too powerful. Or øBlokesÓ by Alan Gibbons, a wonderfully taut, tense story about English laddism (BNP in the making) and a Kosovan refugee. Or Sean Taylor's øSmokeÓ, set in the rubbish tips of Brazil, disturbing in that the relationship between blacks and whites is sadly familiar enough but that both have contempt for the Kankaruni, øthe Indian from the rainforest.Ó Or Nick Gifford's øAssignment DayÓ, a fantasy which makes mockery of the whole basis of discrimination.
But there's not a story here which fails to make its shocking point. This is an important collection and should be widely read.