Something Like Happy by John Burnside
| Something Like Happy by John Burnside | |
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| Category: Short Stories | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A very solid story collection, all the richer for the mood of the title piece being reflected in so many fashions. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 256 | Date: April 2014 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| ISBN: 9780099575597 | |
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How do you pick a name for a short story collection? It seems to me the ...and other stories add-on is like picking a favourite child, a promotion of one portion of the content above the rest. John Burnside has got a title story here, but such is the mood of the book that he seems to have nailed the matter, and picked the most apposite name. Something Like Happy could in a way be the title for practically every piece here.
The title story, which sets us off in a bravura fashion – utterly convincing female first-person narrative, measured tone through a balance of crafted vocabulary and the voice of a young working-class person – concerns two sisters, two brothers and a sweater. It makes you wonder if it might not be better to avoid love, but some people are something like happy. We meet a male hurting a female through love, leaving her to grasp on to something that might not be there for her happiness in the cleverly-titled sequel (I'm sure I'm right in thinking 'Slut's Hair' is the translation of a type of pasta's name, and you'll have to see why that's relevant). A peach Melba becomes a Proustian foodstuff; an academic finds their annual private routine broken; two young friends laying claim to the dangerous sands outside their coastal home find risk elsewhere.
It might seem funny-peculiar for me to mention the conviction in the female narratives, given the length of Burnside's career and the many formats in which he's written, but it is striking that he can manage that so successfully. The academic above is a female, and we also have a daughter of a Slovakian immigrant listlessly moving round her Scottish village after his death, and with her husband increasingly distant, until she finds a new hobby. Another female, on the Neapolitan Riviera this time, might also seem strongly written, but perhaps there is too much unsaid in her tale for us to be sure.
But males also take their places – the front of a lorry, perhaps, as a driver gives himself his own first-person requiem. Perhaps the piece with the biggest impact was a commission for a collection regarding the island of Jura, for the resulting ghost story is nigh-on fabulous. Two things to say in regard to that – the air of the pieces is generally Scottish, but definitely is one of global concerns and widely-recognised emotional states; and that Burnside, while being a poet, memoirist and novelist, can easily grasp a genre work. His oeuvre is one I've neglected, especially when I remember how much I loved his debut novel a long time ago, which was a macabre piece that was what I would think of as modern gothic.
There is a darkness here, and some people have found a little too much that was bleak, disengaging and clipped. I don't think the tone suffers at all, hence my mentioning it from the beginning. Even if some of the works are written to order – there are two visits to the Christmas tale category – you have the pleasure of the pieces all being very varied and utterly distinct, yet definitely squares of the same patchwork quilt. Quality may waver a little – a couple of instances of their being too much back-story and not enough in the current moment – but the collection is definitely one to relish. It's that aura that pervades across the pages from the title down – something like happiness being found in all tales despite the gloom it may have to cut through. I was certainly more than happy as a result.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy. We also have a review of Glister by John Burnside.
Brief Loves That Live Forever by Andrei Makine should appeal – it too has a theme of happiness shining through misery, in this instance that of Soviet Russia, and if anything its stories are even more all of one piece than here. We also have a review of Burnside's biography.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Something Like Happy by John Burnside at Amazon.com.
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