Words on a Page

Douglas Bruton’s latest novella is as stunning as his last – the wonderful Blue Postcards , also published by Fairlight Books . Like the earlier novella, With or Without Angels glisten’s with finely-wrought prose. But there are other similarities, too: a contemplative aging protagonist attempting to untangle memory from illusion; a fragmentary structure; and use of real artists as inspiration. In Blue Postcards , one of the storylines follows the enigmatic artist Yves Klein, and according to the author’s acknowledgements, With or Without Angels was inspired by the Scottish artist Alan Smith . The unnamed protagonist, an artist himself, draws inspiration (as did Smith) from the 18 th century Venetian painter GiandomenicoTiepolo ’s painting Il Mondo Nuovo ‘The New World’. No longer able to paint, but still with ‘too many thoughts in his head’ the artist takes a young assistant, Livvy, to help him express his artistic vision. As his hands have become unsteady, he has swapped his...

Could he pull it off? This relationship thing? He could see the future stretching out before him like a never-ending ribbon of time and he wondered, for the first time, if he could navigate it and make it to the end, and be happy along the way. Frank is the seemingly confident front man in a local rock-n-roll band, but when he meets his future wife, Liz, he is momentarily disarmed. Something about her is different from the groupies who clamber around him at the end of his gigs. When things begin to look serious, Liz puts her foot down. She won’t put up with any nonsense, she tells him. He’s going to have to behave. In chapters that move back and forth in time, Debbi Voisey’s beautiful novella gives us snapshots of Frank throughout his life: as he will be, as he was, and as he is now. In quick succession, we see him at the end of his life – confused and infirm, followed by images of him as a much younger man – vital and charismatic. We see him as a loving father to two young child...

None of these stories are to be trusted, for they are stories of the dead told by the living and the living always lie. Leafing through a box of postcards at a Parisian market stall, the narrator of Douglas Bruton’s exquisite novella finds a distinctive blue postcard which he recognises at once. The colour is International Klein Blue (IKB), created by the avant-garde artist Yves Klein, and the postcard is an invitation to a 1957 exhibition of his monochrome paintings. Such a seemingly simple postcard, but within it is a marvellously intricate meditation about the way memory reshapes itself over time and how truth is often found in fiction. Bruton weaves together three fragmented narratives to create a story filled with passions that are never fully realised: that of the narrator, and his fascination both with Yves Klein and the colour blue; the lonely tailor, Henri, who sews a string of twisted blue Tekhelet threads into a seam in every suit he makes to bring the wearer luck; and Yves ...

  ‘Is it enough to be remembered? Or do you have to be the one remembering?’ Bit by bit, Tito is fading from existence. He has lost weight, and he is shorter than he was. Sometimes his body flickers like the pictures on an analogue TV. And sometimes he disappears altogether. At home in Miami, Tito’s young life is in turmoil. Each of his parents seems to have rejected him, letting him know his birth was ‘an accident’ and referring to him as ‘your son’ when they argue. Finding refuge with his Cuban grandmother, Nana, he begins to learn about magic and the art of creating illusions. Illusions, she tells him, are meant to do good – to help others or oneself to see a situation more clearly. She warns, however, that there is also potential to do the opposite and to cloud or confuse a person’s ability to see at all. ‘In America, as an immigrant, we had to be invisible.’ Tito’s greatest desire, like that of any child, is to feel loved and valued. But his parents are distracted by...

We are different people at different times in our lives, and the experiences we have and the lessons we take from them shape us into the people we become. In Eddie Chuculate’s debut collection,  Cheyenne Madonna , we dip in and out of the life of Jordan Coolwater, glimpsing some of his many identities: devoted son, runaway convict, gifted artist, and grief-ridden husband.  Galveston Bay, 1826 , which won the O. Henry Prize in 2007, gives historical context to Jordan’s life and provides the overall backdrop to the collection. Eager for adventure, Cheyenne chief Old Bull and his three companions set off on an equestrian road-trip to the sea – "the absolute end of the earth." Through the shimmering heat haze which rises off the desert, we watch the landscape change: herds of sand-coloured antelope springing in "long graceful arcs" and a wildfire which appears "like the bluffs of a red canyon, lapping and advancing with thirsty orange flames." When, after ...

Sherman Alexie had already published four collections of poetry by the time he gained national attention in 1993 by winning the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the short story collection The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven .  In 1996, he was named as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in recognition for his first novel Reservation Blues . Two years later, he won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival for the screenplay of Smoke Signals .  In all, Alexie has published eighteen books and screenplays in sixteen years, making him one of the most prolific writers working in the United States today. But his multi-genre talents don’t stop there.  He’s also collaborated on an album with musician Jim Boyd and turned his hand at film directing, too.  And in his free time?  He does a spot of stand-up comedy as well.  * While much of Alexie’s earlier work explores small-town life on the Spokane ...

A Story of Bigamy in the Marriage-Mad Fifties When she is made executor to the estate of family friend Eva Eldridge, the author comes into possession of a large collection of letters which Eva has carefully bundled up and stored away.  Kept with such conscientious orderliness, the letters and check stubs and notes scribbled on the backs of envelopes form a personal archive, and one gets the feeling that Eva, who never spoke to Simmons about the deep mysteries of her life, had saved these letters, purposely, so that one day someone might make sense of her life.  Eva’s story begins in 1958, when she is working in a cigar stand in the swanky Hotel Boise.  She is slim and attractive, and glamorous in the way that women of that era seemed to be: her long hair is swept into a roll at the back of her head, her dress is nipped in at the waist to accentuate her figure, and ‘open-toe, open-back high heels’ add to her statuesque beauty.  She is also ‘deeply, deeply ...

It is often only at the end of a writer’s career that it becomes possible to see how their work has developed, how the focus has narrowed or expanded, how the writer’s thought process has shifted.  In the sixteen years since Sherman Alexie won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the ground-breaking and controversial short story collection Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), he has published a further seventeen books including poetry, novels and short fiction.  Thanks to this rapidly-expanding catalogue, we are able to witness Alexie’s development in almost real time. From the very start, Alexie has explored the question of what it is to be ‘Indian’ in contemporary America, both on and off the Spokane Reservation.  Ten Little Indians (2003), however, began to shift away from the antagonistic cultural tribalism of earlier books.  Ethnicity was no longer the controlling force in the lives of his characters.  They were people ...

Sherman Alexie had already published four collections of poetry by the time he gained national attention in 1993 by winning the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the short story collection The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven .  In 1996, he was named as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in recognition for his first novel Reservation Blues . Two years later, he won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival for the screenplay of Smoke Signals .  In all, Alexie has published eighteen books and screenplays in sixteen years, making him one of the most prolific writers working in the United States today. But his multi-genre talents don’t stop there.   He’s also collaborated on an album with musician Jim Boyd and turned his hand at film directing, too.   And in his free time?   He does a spot of stand-up comedy as well.   * While much of Alexie’s earlier work explores small-town life on the Spokane...