A Flavour of the Book:
“There is a little blood on the sand, in a hollow in the dunes. There is semen too, although it is
hidden in the shadows where sand and grass have been churned. The blood is clear, scarlet, bright;
both its colour and its brightness out of place in the soft grey-green and pale
straw colours here. It will fade
soon, darken until it’s almost black…” – from Dodie’s Gift by Vanessa
Gebbie
The Authortrek View: This
is a compelling collection of short stories from the international Willesden Herald short
story competition, edited by the excellent Stephen Moran, who has managed to
attract some fine writers to this award, along with a fine final arbiter in the
form of Zadie Smith.
Willie Davis’ sardonic Kid in a Well won the Willesden Prize, and is an
excellent story to start off the collection. One of my favourites was Paradise by Nicholas Hogg,
which showed off this author’s great imagination, and his ability to walk in
other people’s shoes. The
resolution does seem to somewhat stretch credulity, but the author has done his
research, and it is possible to survive a plane flight in the manner described
in the story. The wistful Dodie’s Gift reveals itself to have been a
fine winner of the 2006 Willesden Prize, and it was a delight to hear the
author Vanessa Gebbie read at the launch party, despite the loss of a page from
her reading copy. Jonathan
Attrill’s fable Felipe and the Sea has all the makings of a timeless
classic, while the story he read at the launch party was a great and all too
realistic insight into the modern psyche.
Laura Solomon is a previous winner of the Bridport Prize, which just
goes to show the calibre of the entrants of the Willesden Prize. I greatly enjoyed Alternative
Medecine, especially its wry and macabre humour, so it’s quite criminal
that Laura Solomon has not had more novels published. Avoiding the Issue was another of my favourites, as
Laura Heggie tackles the vexing question of how to deal with beggars, in a tale
that has a rather neat resolution.
Willesden Herald New Short Stories 1 proves that the modern short
story is alive and kicking, but it is a great shame that there are not more
editors like Stephen Moran around to nurture it.
To find out more about the editor, please visit our Stephen Moran page.
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