![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/TheStoneThrower.jpg\" "\\"TheStoneThrower\\"")
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\u2018Medical section\u2019s upstairs,\u2019 she told me.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think it should be in fiction.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Then we don\u2019t got it.\u2019<\/p>\n
Instruction Manual for Swallowing<\/em>\u00a0was Adam Marek\u2019s first collection for Comma Press, a publisher remarkable for its consistent brilliance and commitment to the short story.\u00a0\u00a0Having spent some time promising to follow it up with a novel, this year Marek has instead published a second collection,\u00a0The Stone Thrower<\/em>.<\/p>\n Instruction Manual<\/em>\u00a0was going to be hard to follow for two reasons. In the first place it is an excellent collection, well structured and full of imaginative, perfectly paced stories. But in the second, the surprise of Marek\u2019s style would now be expected. But neither of these are a problem.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ll admit early that I\u2019m a fan. I think Marek\u2019s\u00a0Instruction Manual<\/em>\u00a0was the best short story debut I\u2019ve read since Carver\u2019s\u00a0will you please be quiet, please?<\/em>\u00a0And like Carver \u2013 as with many writers on Comma\u2019s list – the story ends just before you feel it ought to. In \u2018Remember the Bride who got Stung\u2019, for example, we trust and follow the conventional narrative over the fields and into the woods, antagonistic parents and child together, with Marek employing distractingly good observation. It\u2019s a mundane storyline, but it becomes infused with horror and tension, and two steps before the tension is to peak\u2026 the story ends. Reading Marek\u2019s work can remind you of prodding a favourite bruise.<\/p>\n But in spite of being black and blue I trust Marek\u2019s abuse is for the best. The story not having a \u2018conventional\u2019 ending means that you are pulled back into it again to consider it better. You wonder what he\u2019s up to, why he\u2019s hurting you like this. Perhaps it’s an existential illusion he is breaking, of being led by the hand through the world. Marek takes your hand, leads you into the woods then abandons you like the boy in Blake\u2019s \u2018The Little Boy Lost\u2019 who follows a corpse candle onto the mire thinking it\u2019s his father. (I hope my analyst doesn\u2019t read this. (I hope Adam Marek doesn\u2019t read this either \u2013 I\u2019m being creepy. (But how many readers is it safe to exclude? I\u2019ll never be famous this way.))) Or perhaps Marek is drawing attention to the idea that the real story is not in the narrative. (Does this sound creepy too? (Again. (Again. (Now I sound like the Teletubbies.)))) It\u2019s as though the narrative is a tool which the writer feels happy to put down and forget about, job done.<\/p>\n Whatever the reason, it is testament to the quality of the writing and the reader\u2019s confidence in the writer that even though no \u2018ending\u2019 is given you do not feel that the ending is ambiguous. You do not feel that it could go either way – that the ending is open – it is just that you don\u2019t know which way it has gone. Put another way, you do not feel that the narrative stops, even though the story has stopped.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Abused and abandoned by Marek I still look forward to the novel. His fablish sort of magical realism and instinct for horror would no doubt translate as intriguingly for Marek as it did for the Argentine, Julio Cortazar.<\/p>\n It may be unfair to compare Marek to writers like Cortazar, but I\u2019m doing it partly because on the front of\u00a0The Stone Thrower<\/em>\u00a0there is an annoying cover quote taken from\u00a0The Independent<\/em>\u00a0describing the book (or Marek) as \u2018Early McEwan meets David Cronenburg\u2019. I can\u2019t help feeling that this is unhelpful, and probably a marketing error. The people reading Marek will be people interested in great new experimental short stories, and to these people Ian McEwan lost his cool long ago. More than that, I think Marek\u2019s writing is better, his imagination more exciting, and he more relevant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So\u00a0The Stone Thrower<\/em>\u00a0is no less exciting than\u00a0Instruction Manual<\/em>, but it is better structured. There are recurring themes which haunt the stories and make it a better sequence than the earlier collection. You will be hard pushed to find a better short story publisher than Comma Press, hard pushed to find a better constructed collection of stories than this, and hard pushed indeed to find a single tale so skilfully wrought as \u2018Tamagotchi\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (For reference, I did find\u00a0Instruction Manual for Swallowing<\/em>\u00a0in the \u2018Medical\u2019 section of that Cardiff bookshop, with\u00a0The Stone Thrower<\/em>\u00a0under \u2018Occupational\u2019.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n