Review: Storm Warning: Echoes of Conflict by Vanessa Gebbie

This collection of short stories by Vanessa Gebbie is not cozy bed-time reading. Even the most apparently innocent openings--"I'm on a train going to the sea"--only mask for a short time the brutal truth that's about to be revealed. Liesl is on a train, and she's been told she's going to the sea, but the train in 'Red Sandals' has a very different destination.

Gebbie gives us little slices of insights into people's lives that are often so harsh that you want to look away, but also so honest and intimate that you feel looking away would be a betrayal. From the baker returned from WWI who goes down a tin mine instead of returning to his trade, but finds that even underground he can't hide from what happened to his neighbour and fellow-soldier to the bedridden ex-soldier whose self-conceit never quite catches up with the change in his circumstances, Gebbie shines a spotlight into those places we'd rather not look.

The writing is clean and to the point with few words wasted. "The sky was the deepest blue, over there above the hill. No stars. Security lights at the factories." Thus, the scene is set in 'Background Noise', where Maidie learns there is more to her grandfather's story of a daring escape from a submarine than she previously suspected. "My lips moved against the rubber. Every breath I took filled my chest with bad air. I pulled at it, tugging it back down, trying to keep it. It was mine. I was Bambrick." Like so many of Gebbie's characters, Grampa has something to hide. Out it comes, though, eventually, choking and gasping its way out into the night, as if it simply can't be held back any longer. Then we have it, the raw truth of the character's secret, exposed on the page.

The characters in these stories are ordinary people. They could be us, or our close relatives, our friends, people we meet in the streets. The stories put us into their lives, and make them more real by only offering these slices, by eschewing backstory and long explanations. Characterisation is deftly achieved in a few strokes. "Before the lockers were broken, Takundwa laughed from behind the schoolhouse. Before the tables were burned in the open, the last time he was a naughty little brother and ducked under Hondo's fist and ran away." ('Maiba's Ribbon') "He stands a full head above me and I am considered not short. It is said he has the strength to lift a full barrel and carry it to the slow count of an hundred. His hair it is thick and long, and of reddish colour, and his gaze most impassioned when he speaks of two things: his God and his ale." ('The Ale-Heretic')

With this volume, small but perfectly-formed, both Gebbie and Salt Publishing cement their reputations for producing quality short fiction that demands to be read.

Words From a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie, reviewed by Debbie

Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Words from a Glass Bubble" by Vanessa Gebbie is a collection of nineteen of her short stories, compiled in a handsome hardback from Salt Publishing. There's no overarching narrative, but although the stories are very different, some themes and images crop up more than once.

Gebbie's talent is to shine a light onto her characters, giving us brief insights into their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, and--most of all--their mistakes, before moving on, leaving us with the hope that the characters too will carry on, make better decisions, have better luck, once the spotlight is removed.

Each story has its own voice, from "Words in a Glass Bubble" itself, where a family tries to come to terms with the loss of their son, to "Smoking Down There", where a child naively recounts her friend's story of how she almost inadvertently saved her baby brother from being disposed of at birth. The fragmentary, butterfly narrative convinces as that of a child. 'But then, if you smoked down there why didn't the hairs catch fire? That's what I wanted to know. But the bucket. Why wash out of a bucket when there were perfectly nice china things?'

Gebbie doesn't shy away from the darker side of life. One story, "Irrigation", goes into great detail--too great detail for this reader--about an enema. In "Dodie's Gift", the central character is left lost and wondering, "...if someone takes something you were going to give them anyway, is that stealing?' Reading this story, it's hard to decide whether to give her a hug or a good shake. Either, you think, might damage her beyond repair.

This story contains an image that recurs--'But there, at the bottom of the hollow, a gull has had a meal, and the sand holds white bone, red bone, skin....' The predator devours, leaves what it doesn't want, and moves on. What's been devoured, abandoned, somehow has to move on, too. Its life now may not be what it envisaged, but it still holds significance.

None of the stories is too long, although it's easy to feel some are too short. The characters live on in our minds and we can't help wondering what will happen next. If they'll come out all right.

This collection is definitely one to savour. Read a story, put it down, think about it, come back--the whole can't be devoured in an afternoon.


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