I read quite a lot of short stories and find they tend to come in two categories. Some are like short novellas, complete stories with a beginning, middle and ending, and well-developed characters. The classical short-story tends to be like this whether written by Chekov, de Maupassant, Tolstoy or countless others. Other writers seems to write enigmatic fragments or word-pictures, which sometimes seem more like a cryptic puzzle than a story, as though the author wants to tease the readers and provoke them to fill in the gaps for themselves.
Having recently written a bit of a eulogy about Gerard Woodward and his Jones family trilogy, I came to his new book of short stories, Caravan Thieves, with keen anticipation, and found the book firmly in the second of my categories above, the fragmented episode, the snap-shot of a life and sometimes the puzzle too.
I read the first story, the eponymous Caravan Thieves with interest – a caravaning couple, Phil and Joyce wake in their caravan one morning to find their caravan has been teleported (airlifted?) into the middle of a field of yellow rape. There are no tracks to the van through the field and their bewilderment is complete. They set off to walk through the field and the Phil’s thoughts turn to raping his wife (funnily enough, neither of the two can remember the name of the bright yellow plant).
Phil imagines the sex-crime scenario vividly as he trudges through the filed behind Joyce, but when they reach the edge of the field and his thoughts subside and they walk off down a lane. End of story. Hmm, nicely written, but lacking something somehow. Its obviously not Woodward’s intention to provide much of a narrative or to give a satisfying conclusion. Perhaps he wants his readers to ask questions:
- What does the story mean?
- Does it matter how the caravan got to the middle of the field?
- Is it the forgetting of the name of the plant which activated thoughts of rape in the husband’s subconscious?
To me it felt like watching a clip from a film, perhaps one of those ’60s neo-realist Italian films by Fellini or Pasolini – but at least you got the whole film in the cinema, however bizarre or enigmatic. However, I have to say, on the whole, this story just seems a little, well, er, pointless. It was a bit like finding an old postcard in a second-hand shop and reading the message on the back, perhaps describing some distant holiday – you wonder who the sender and recipient were but you know that you’ll never be able to find out.
Another story concerns Jake who while walking home from the betting shop is attacked by a group of longbow-men and is struck by three arrows which lodge in his body. The story describes his walk home with the arrows sticking out of him. He considers flagging down a car to ask for a lift but realises that he would never be able to sit down in it because of the arrows sticking out of his back. He notices a one-way street sign with an arrow pointing the direction of travel, and has a little meditation on the nature of arrows:
It occurred to him what a mean, cruel, and terrifying instrument an arrow was – or rather an arrowhead. Its backward-pointing barbs were such a nasty little trick, meaning the arrow couldn’t be removed from its host without causing further damage . . . why couldn’t we have pointing fingers on our signs, or birds in flight?
A sad little tale, the purpose of which again escaped me.
They are not all like this however. “Chicken-pox” is an amusing tale of a teenage girl’s boyfriend coming to visit her while she has chicken-pox, which seems to be about the ability of a young man to lust after someone covered with superating sores all over her body. It is musingly told and makes me think that this volume would have benefited from more of the same.
Sometimes the stories are just not very interesting. “Ford Mondeo” has about as much fascination as its title – two couples have a post Christmas shopping expedition to the local shopping centre. It would be hard to find a less-interesting tale, the differences between the two couples being the focal point, but for a large part of the story they separate in order to shop separately. Woodward therefore misses out on the opportunity to create a conflict or set-piece which would bring some life to the story. All we get is them meeting up again for the drive home with the materialistic couple having filled the car with boxes while the other couple seems to derive some sort of moral superiority from their frugal empty-handedness.
I will refrain from describing the other stories in this rather mixed-bag. The reviews in newspapers were rather glowing so perhaps I’m missing something. What was missing was the insightful prose with which Woodward filled the Jones Trilogy. In I Go To Bed At Noon and other novels, Woodward writes movingly in a way which sometimes make you feel your heart is stopping and. It is hard to believe that Caravan Thieves comes from the same writer. I feel sorry to be writing this review for I respect Woodward’s talents greatly and wonder if I’ve missed something!
