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lauraeatsbooks's review
3.0
Strong collection but I feel I would have preferred the stories if I read them in a journal or anthology as a one off
gorecki's review
4.0
Wendy, when is your next book out?!
Highlights: Inakeen, Locksmiths, Last Supper, Lady and Dog, The Soul Has No Skin
Highlights: Inakeen, Locksmiths, Last Supper, Lady and Dog, The Soul Has No Skin
booksiread's review
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
cinzia's review
2.0
I’m sorry, I can see there is some really important social commentary in this collection which I give so much kudos for, but the writing style and I did not get on. Just not my taste.
It’s a very distinctive style, very breezy and naturalistic; but perhaps too breezy for my dyslexic brain. I know that sounds weird, but I actually find it harder to read breezy books than hard ones because I tend to drift off too easily and not pay attention. There wasn’t anything that gripped my attention so I ended up disengaging and I couldn’t gel with the text. I didn’t engage with the writing so everything became empty and I wasn’t interested or invested in the collection.
I can see people really enjoying this read, the writer clearly has a skill for writing, but it was just a stylistic incompatibility for me.
It’s a very distinctive style, very breezy and naturalistic; but perhaps too breezy for my dyslexic brain. I know that sounds weird, but I actually find it harder to read breezy books than hard ones because I tend to drift off too easily and not pay attention. There wasn’t anything that gripped my attention so I ended up disengaging and I couldn’t gel with the text. I didn’t engage with the writing so everything became empty and I wasn’t interested or invested in the collection.
I can see people really enjoying this read, the writer clearly has a skill for writing, but it was just a stylistic incompatibility for me.
arirang's review
3.0
Now shortlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The judges citation:
The Stinging Fly Press is best known for the quite brilliant - novel? linked story collection? - Pond, published in 2015, but read by me in, and perhaps my favourite book of, 2016 (my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/160432844), co-published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo.
Sweet Home, the debut short-story collection by Wendy Erskine, is less formally innovative, but equally powerful. Erskine's stories are typically around 20 pages long, and what is most impressive is how, in that limited amount of words, she manages to create genuinely engaging characters, in whose story the reader becomes emotionally invested. Her modus operandi is typically to provide her characters with a backstory, usually a past trauma, which only gradually emerges in the story and explains their current behaviour, and several of the stories feature the perspective of more than one character, for example the opening story 'To All Their Dues' which starts with Mo, a young woman running a small beauty salon and under threat from a protection racketeer, before the focus shifts to Kyle, the racketeer, helping us understand his motivations, and then to Kyle's partner who, bringing the story full circle, turns out to be a customer of Mo.
See Gumble Yard's review for a more extensive overview: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2553491586
To take just one example of my own, thestory Last Supper, based on two couples, Bucky and his partner Emma, who respectively garden and clean for a professional couple Gavin and his wife, Gavin seemingly rather overfriendly and the woman cold.
Bucky said that the woman was like something off The Apprentice, one of the quiet ones in the background that turn out to be planning something all along, the sort that gets to the final and you wouldn’t have hardly noticed them the whole series. The woman was jetting round the place, flying all over the globe, but then she didn’t even know how much to pay a gardener, didn’t know how much to pay a cleaner, probably didn’t know the price of a pint of milk. Bucky was getting more for that one job than five others put together. And what they were going to pay her for the cleaning job was brilliant. Gav had apparently said they didn’t want to rip people off, but everybody needed to rip everybody else off at least a bit. Was that not the point? Bucky called him Gav nowadays. Bucky had said to her not to even bother trying to get Carl minded when she was working there. No point. Just bring him along, he said. Your man won’t care. Might be a bit more of an issue if your woman’s there, but your man, no, it won’t be a problem. Seriously, he said, don’t worry about it.
shifting to Emma:
Emma had worked as a cleaner before, hoovering up other people’s whatnot, hair and skin and the like. You’d just wiped their thickened piss from under the toilet seat, she had observed, and there they were, clutching their purse, how much do I owe you, giving you their tatty little note and some change, like they were the duchess. Hard not to laugh. You’d have to think about something really boring like a potato so you didn’t laugh. At Gavin and his wife’s place there was an alarm system and Emma had to key in five digits. The first time she went there, she wondered what had happened to all of their stuff because at home they had more crammed into their front room than there was in this entire place. It was empty as a church. The huge fruit bowl had a tower of apples, really green and shiny. Emma dusted the fruit, and if any of the apples were not looking so good, she replaced them with others from the fridge, taking care that they went back in exactly the same position. There was great suck on their vacuum cleaner, though. Powerful.
and then Gavin:
It had been two months since Emma had started as the cleaner. What had begun to irk Gavin was the amount of time that little kid spent in front of the TV watching saccharine US animations. He sat straight-backed on the floor with the curtains closed, mesmerised by the stuff. It couldn’t be good for language acquisition and development. And Emma there: don’t do that. Gonna kill you if you do that again. He wondered about the kid’s diet. He wasn’t judgmental, he would happily eat a takeaway every night of the week, but children needed something better. Every week the kid arrived at the house eating a packet of Wotsits. Emma would quickly take them from him before they came in, but Gavin had seen. She sometimes gave him another bag when they were leaving. He had seen that too.
but we then discover the tragedy that has led Gavin to perhaps be over solicitous with the welfare of Bucky and Emma's son, and perhaps also his wife to be emotionally uptight.
Worthwhile. 3.5 stars.
The judges citation:
The Stinging Fly Press is making a habit of publishing bold, distinctive debut short-story collections: from Colin Barrett’s Young Skins to Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond. Sweet Home is a fine addition. Erskine has a generous eye and ear, and an excellent sense of place; she wants us to witness the complexities of experience in a world of poverty, isolation and sadness.The Stinging Fly magazine was established in 1997 to, in their words: seek out, publish and promote the very best new Irish and international writing. We believe that there is a need for a magazine that, first and foremost, gives new and emerging writers an opportunity to get their work out into the world. We are particularly concerned to provide an outlet for short story writers. and The Stinging Fly Press imprint was launched in May 2005, also focused on the short story.
The Stinging Fly Press is best known for the quite brilliant - novel? linked story collection? - Pond, published in 2015, but read by me in, and perhaps my favourite book of, 2016 (my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/160432844), co-published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo.
Sweet Home, the debut short-story collection by Wendy Erskine, is less formally innovative, but equally powerful. Erskine's stories are typically around 20 pages long, and what is most impressive is how, in that limited amount of words, she manages to create genuinely engaging characters, in whose story the reader becomes emotionally invested. Her modus operandi is typically to provide her characters with a backstory, usually a past trauma, which only gradually emerges in the story and explains their current behaviour, and several of the stories feature the perspective of more than one character, for example the opening story 'To All Their Dues' which starts with Mo, a young woman running a small beauty salon and under threat from a protection racketeer, before the focus shifts to Kyle, the racketeer, helping us understand his motivations, and then to Kyle's partner who, bringing the story full circle, turns out to be a customer of Mo.
See Gumble Yard's review for a more extensive overview: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2553491586
To take just one example of my own, thestory Last Supper, based on two couples, Bucky and his partner Emma, who respectively garden and clean for a professional couple Gavin and his wife, Gavin seemingly rather overfriendly and the woman cold.
Bucky said that the woman was like something off The Apprentice, one of the quiet ones in the background that turn out to be planning something all along, the sort that gets to the final and you wouldn’t have hardly noticed them the whole series. The woman was jetting round the place, flying all over the globe, but then she didn’t even know how much to pay a gardener, didn’t know how much to pay a cleaner, probably didn’t know the price of a pint of milk. Bucky was getting more for that one job than five others put together. And what they were going to pay her for the cleaning job was brilliant. Gav had apparently said they didn’t want to rip people off, but everybody needed to rip everybody else off at least a bit. Was that not the point? Bucky called him Gav nowadays. Bucky had said to her not to even bother trying to get Carl minded when she was working there. No point. Just bring him along, he said. Your man won’t care. Might be a bit more of an issue if your woman’s there, but your man, no, it won’t be a problem. Seriously, he said, don’t worry about it.
shifting to Emma:
Emma had worked as a cleaner before, hoovering up other people’s whatnot, hair and skin and the like. You’d just wiped their thickened piss from under the toilet seat, she had observed, and there they were, clutching their purse, how much do I owe you, giving you their tatty little note and some change, like they were the duchess. Hard not to laugh. You’d have to think about something really boring like a potato so you didn’t laugh. At Gavin and his wife’s place there was an alarm system and Emma had to key in five digits. The first time she went there, she wondered what had happened to all of their stuff because at home they had more crammed into their front room than there was in this entire place. It was empty as a church. The huge fruit bowl had a tower of apples, really green and shiny. Emma dusted the fruit, and if any of the apples were not looking so good, she replaced them with others from the fridge, taking care that they went back in exactly the same position. There was great suck on their vacuum cleaner, though. Powerful.
and then Gavin:
It had been two months since Emma had started as the cleaner. What had begun to irk Gavin was the amount of time that little kid spent in front of the TV watching saccharine US animations. He sat straight-backed on the floor with the curtains closed, mesmerised by the stuff. It couldn’t be good for language acquisition and development. And Emma there: don’t do that. Gonna kill you if you do that again. He wondered about the kid’s diet. He wasn’t judgmental, he would happily eat a takeaway every night of the week, but children needed something better. Every week the kid arrived at the house eating a packet of Wotsits. Emma would quickly take them from him before they came in, but Gavin had seen. She sometimes gave him another bag when they were leaving. He had seen that too.
but we then discover the tragedy that has led Gavin to perhaps be over solicitous with the welfare of Bucky and Emma's son, and perhaps also his wife to be emotionally uptight.
Worthwhile. 3.5 stars.
lia's review
4.0
A series of haunting short stories. Erskine's writing is fragmented and dream-like. She succeeds in potraying strong characters in the space of a short narrative.
Each story seems to convey a sense of weary melancholy, of loneliness and hanging in suspense. Sad and powerful.
Each story seems to convey a sense of weary melancholy, of loneliness and hanging in suspense. Sad and powerful.
jackielaw's review
5.0
Sweet Home is a collection of ten short stories that prove what powerful tales can be told in this condensed format. All are set in and around contemporary East Belfast. They feature ordinary people as their quiet disappointments and resentments bubble to the surface of their everyday lives. The author captures the quotidian with insight and poignancy along with each character’s yearning for what they perceive to be passing them by. There is a depth of understanding, a recognition that most hurts go unnoticed as individuals deal with their own demons and desires.
The collection opens with To All Their Dues which is told from three points of view. A young woman is trying to establish her new small business; a thug is demanding protection money but fears for the future of his nefarious income; his wife is trying to find a way to cope with her familial past. The way these three flawed lives are presented, with understanding but also clear sighted portrayal of limitations and worst behaviours, demonstrates the wit and skill with which the author writes.
Inakeen is an searingly honest depiction of a mother and son whose lives and aspirations are of little real interest to the other. The son visits his mother out of duty, not understanding how dull she finds his conversation. He does not notice her growing interest in her new neighbours, and how she feels let down by his inability to maintain relationships. While he is bitterly resentful that his former partner left him, his mother misses the younger woman’s company and that of her grandchild. She imagines the enjoyment her new neighbours – three women, one dressed in a burqa – have living together. Without knowing them, she longs to join in.
Observation looks at two families whose teenage daughters are best friends. Lauren is drawn to her mother’s new boyfriend. Cath is intrigued by a family setup so different from her own. Cath’s parents talk of Lauren’s mother in less than flattering terms. There is an undercurrent of denial in how much each character knows about what is going on, and in what is being said.
Locksmiths introduces a young woman raised by her grandmother after her mother was sent to prison. The grandmother is now dead and the mother due for release. The reader is offered views of each of these women through the others’ eyes. Little is flattering.
The titular story is a tale of two couples: a man who returns to Belfast with his English wife, both having established successful careers; the other couple younger and more ordinary, who are employed as gardener and cleaner. The latter pair have a child who becomes the focus of the returned man’s interest. None of these adults are content with their current situation and, to a degree, blame their partners.
Last Supper is set in a coffee shop run on a charitable basis. This skews the terms under which staff and customers operate. Daily tasks are carried out but the success of the enterprise is compromised by limitations imposed by the benefactors. The manager does his best to deal fairly with unrealistic expectations built on crumbling foundations.
Arab States: Mind and Narrative features a middle aged woman who allows her lingering regret at a choice made while at university to distort her current reasoning. She imagines that an old acquaintance, who has written a book, will still be interested in her. She wishes to bask in his reflected success. She tries to remake herself as the intelligent conversationalist she thinks he regarded her as back in the day. She is blind to her current self, which is all others see.
Lady and Dog tells the story of a teacher whose life changed when, as a teenager, her lover was killed. As she approaches retirement she becomes obsessed by a young man who teaches sport to her pupils. The denouement is horrific in ways that made me question why certain deaths shock more than others.
77 Pop Facts You Didn’t Know About Gil Courtney is a list, as described in the title, telling the life story of an almost famous musician. The structure is fun, clever but with a depth of sadness. Growing up on the Cregagh estate, Gil’s father would have preferred his son to take the expected factory job at Mackies. Gil’s exceptional musical abilities as a child were nurtured but these did not lead to long term happiness. The rock and roll lifestyle requires financial resources, the accumulation of which requires business acumen. It is interesting to reflect on the cost of fame and benefits of accepting a more ordinary life.
The Soul has no skin is a shattering tale of a young boy whose life is irreparably denuded by an act of kindness. Barry lives an austere and often lonely life, choosing to eschew ambition and exist below society’s radar. He has experience of being noticed and the scars this created run deep.
No mere summary of these plots can do justice to what is special about the writing. The author gets under the skin of what it means to live in a world striving to offer something better than that which an individual already has. This desire for better, rather than taking pleasure in the here and now, leads to restlessness and a blaming of others. Yet the tales are poignant rather than depressing, understanding more than recriminating. The use of language and fragile intensity make them alluring and satisfying to read.
The collection opens with To All Their Dues which is told from three points of view. A young woman is trying to establish her new small business; a thug is demanding protection money but fears for the future of his nefarious income; his wife is trying to find a way to cope with her familial past. The way these three flawed lives are presented, with understanding but also clear sighted portrayal of limitations and worst behaviours, demonstrates the wit and skill with which the author writes.
Inakeen is an searingly honest depiction of a mother and son whose lives and aspirations are of little real interest to the other. The son visits his mother out of duty, not understanding how dull she finds his conversation. He does not notice her growing interest in her new neighbours, and how she feels let down by his inability to maintain relationships. While he is bitterly resentful that his former partner left him, his mother misses the younger woman’s company and that of her grandchild. She imagines the enjoyment her new neighbours – three women, one dressed in a burqa – have living together. Without knowing them, she longs to join in.
Observation looks at two families whose teenage daughters are best friends. Lauren is drawn to her mother’s new boyfriend. Cath is intrigued by a family setup so different from her own. Cath’s parents talk of Lauren’s mother in less than flattering terms. There is an undercurrent of denial in how much each character knows about what is going on, and in what is being said.
Locksmiths introduces a young woman raised by her grandmother after her mother was sent to prison. The grandmother is now dead and the mother due for release. The reader is offered views of each of these women through the others’ eyes. Little is flattering.
The titular story is a tale of two couples: a man who returns to Belfast with his English wife, both having established successful careers; the other couple younger and more ordinary, who are employed as gardener and cleaner. The latter pair have a child who becomes the focus of the returned man’s interest. None of these adults are content with their current situation and, to a degree, blame their partners.
Last Supper is set in a coffee shop run on a charitable basis. This skews the terms under which staff and customers operate. Daily tasks are carried out but the success of the enterprise is compromised by limitations imposed by the benefactors. The manager does his best to deal fairly with unrealistic expectations built on crumbling foundations.
Arab States: Mind and Narrative features a middle aged woman who allows her lingering regret at a choice made while at university to distort her current reasoning. She imagines that an old acquaintance, who has written a book, will still be interested in her. She wishes to bask in his reflected success. She tries to remake herself as the intelligent conversationalist she thinks he regarded her as back in the day. She is blind to her current self, which is all others see.
Lady and Dog tells the story of a teacher whose life changed when, as a teenager, her lover was killed. As she approaches retirement she becomes obsessed by a young man who teaches sport to her pupils. The denouement is horrific in ways that made me question why certain deaths shock more than others.
77 Pop Facts You Didn’t Know About Gil Courtney is a list, as described in the title, telling the life story of an almost famous musician. The structure is fun, clever but with a depth of sadness. Growing up on the Cregagh estate, Gil’s father would have preferred his son to take the expected factory job at Mackies. Gil’s exceptional musical abilities as a child were nurtured but these did not lead to long term happiness. The rock and roll lifestyle requires financial resources, the accumulation of which requires business acumen. It is interesting to reflect on the cost of fame and benefits of accepting a more ordinary life.
The Soul has no skin is a shattering tale of a young boy whose life is irreparably denuded by an act of kindness. Barry lives an austere and often lonely life, choosing to eschew ambition and exist below society’s radar. He has experience of being noticed and the scars this created run deep.
No mere summary of these plots can do justice to what is special about the writing. The author gets under the skin of what it means to live in a world striving to offer something better than that which an individual already has. This desire for better, rather than taking pleasure in the here and now, leads to restlessness and a blaming of others. Yet the tales are poignant rather than depressing, understanding more than recriminating. The use of language and fragile intensity make them alluring and satisfying to read.
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