Storm Warning: Echoes of Conflict by Vanessa Gebbie (Salt Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978 1 84771 812 2, paperback)
Short stories (and very short stories aka flash fiction) remain one of the most popular formats for readers yet curiously one of the least popular for book publishers, so well done Salt Publishing by bringing out this collection by the Bridport winning Vanessa Gebbie. This is a collection that somehow fell off my radar when it was published last year (too engrossed in my own small world I fear) however the stories here have a timeless quality making the collection still a relevant read.
Relevant read? No, these stories are a must-read for although the subject matter is about as grim as grim can get: about the impact war, horror, oppression, persecution and atrocity can have on ordinary human beings – the people who are the foot-soldiers, the innocent bystanders, the 'little people' (thank you Leonora Helmsley) and the 'collateral damage' (to use a weasel newspeak word Orwell would surely have approved of to describe the impact on innocents) of wars, crusades, pogroms, revolutions, ethnic cleansings and genocides down the ages.
Grim reading indeed but Gebbie's skill (and of course she is at home in this format, she's contributed to a couple of books about the art of short story writing) is to keep the tales (which range across history from the religious persecutions of the Reformation to the First and Second World Wars and on to the armed struggle in South Africa) firmly grounded on the individual and their experiences and impressions. And, this is where something magical happens for despite the awfulness of everything her characters witness and experience, along with the inevitable sadness and despair we also see the genuine humanity peeking through. The compassion, the gallows humour, the recognition of the ironies of life – in fact all the stuff (bad word I know) that makes people human, that keeps people going even in the face of death.
Being a bit of a low-brow (aliens and androids are more my scene) I thought I was going to hate this collection as normally I 'don't do' literary fiction but I was gripped. Late at night – with an early train to catch in the morning – I found myself delaying switching off the light so I could read just one more story. It is a sign of the quality of Gebbie's writing that she can make this collection un-put-downable. Buy it, read it.
….reviewed by Charles Christian