Sometimes, when leaving a party or social occasion, I will jokingly say to the hosts: “Thanks, it’s been real.”
That’s me trying to be funny and a bit ironic. I could say the same thing to author John Kinsella regarding his new book of short fiction, Beam of Light, only this time I would really mean it.
Because there is something all too real about many of his stories. We recognise the places and the people and the sentiments. Who hasn’t struggled or known someone who has struggled with substance abuse? Who hasn’t experienced hard knocks or known someone who has done it (or is doing it) tough?
Characters living hardscrabble lives, land denuded by development and neglect, shabby little towns where life is difficult. In Kinsella’s stories you get all this and it makes you think.
The publicity blurb suggests this is a “haunting collection” and I wouldn’t argue with that. There is, however, hope and optimism beneath the sometimes grim exterior. Kinsella’s characters, despite their travails, have mostly not given up.
Of course, if you want nice sunny tales you will have to go elsewhere but, really, who does want nice sunny tales? Reality has more to offer than a fantasy world viewed through rose-coloured glasses.
The stories in this very satisfying and entertaining collection, laced with dark humour, range in location from Ireland to Germany to Greece to the Australian countryside and a landscape threatened by catastrophic heat, land clearing, housing estates and strip malls.
Kinsella lives on Ballardong Noongar land at Jam Tree Gully in the Western Australian wheatbelt. He has also lived in the US, UK, Ireland and elsewhere, but I get the sense that it’s his rural domain that he finds most inspiring.
He is an erudite man, regarded by many as our finest poet. In conversation at a poetry event recently he was touted as the perfect prospect for an Australian poet laureate.
He’s an intellectual of some standing but is never remote from ordinary life and he has an innate understanding of battlers, the sort of battlers who you might encounter in John Steinbeck or John O’Hara.
One of the things I love about these stories on a purely practical level is their brevity. That’s attractive if, like me, you read late at night, fighting against drowsiness. These bite-sized pieces are perfect – one or two before sleeping.
I couldn’t wait to get back to this book each night and I was always surprised as each story is so unique. It’s a rare treat to feel like this while reviewing a book. Reviewing so often feels like a chore but Kinsella’s stories are so engaging that each one is a rare pleasure, a little world to step into and dwell therein, however briefly.
They are also quite cinematic at times. For example, I could see, in my mind’s eye, the scene in which a couple are invited to dinner by a family of Christians new in town. In that story things get a little out of control. As Dr Evil would say …”It got weird”. Really weird.
As I said, addiction is an occasional subject and is introduced early on with the first story, Beam of Light, dealing with the issue straight up. The bloke in the story “had not had a drink in a month … But something had gone snap, and instead of his AA meeting (which was going nowhere) he went to the bottle shop”. Human tragedy summed up in just a few words.
One of my favourite pieces is Fox Skeleton, a brilliantly metaphorical story exploring our relationship with the natural world. The girl in the story is trying to honour a deceased fox despite it being regraded as a pest. She wants to disperse its bones over a valley as a tribute to its spirit. When her cousins suggest she is defending the indefensible she shoots back, “It’s you … we … who brought them here and we who have destroyed the valley and the native animals. We, we, we!”
If you have ever lived in a small town, you will recognise some of the people and places that Kinsella chronicles in this delicious collection. His last book for Transit Lounge was a verse novel, Cellnight, while he has previously published two other short story collections with the same publisher.
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Let’s hope there is more to come. I haven’t felt as excited about reviewing a book of stories for years. The last time I felt this keen to get back to reading a book was some years ago when I had to review Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories by Patricia Highsmith.
Things get weird in Highsmith, too. I love that.
Beam of Light by John Kinsella, Transit Lounge, $32.99.
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