The Best Australian Stories 2015 edited by Amanda Lohrey, Black Inc, 2015
Amanda Lohrey returns as the editor of The Best Australian Stories 2015, continuing her role from 2014. While certain authors from both editions, Julie Koh and Mark Smith are among those that stand out with short stories that introduce readers to original subject matter, affecting characters and utterly authentic tales, Lohrey remains steadfastly uninterested in encouraging unknown talent. While previous editors, including Cate Kennedy and Robert Drewe, published well-known authors alongside those that were emerging or otherwise unpublished, Lohrey seems to have stuck to familiar territory yet again. Not only have all authors from the 2014 and 2015 anthologies edited by Lohrey been previously published but five, including Koh and Smith, appear in both.
Julie Koh, author of ‘The Level Playing Field’ from her 2015 short story collection Capital Misfits has another anthology, Civility Place forthcoming in June 2016 and Mark Smith has been published in several major literary journals. As well, readers of The Best Australian Stories 2014, may well remember, Claire Corbett author of the 2011 novel, shortlisted for two literary awards, When We Have Wings, Ryan O’Neill, author of the anthology The Weight of a Human Heart, and Nicola Redhouse, all of whom have made the 2015 edition. However, that said, from the twenty short stories included in The Best Australian Stories 2015, Julie Koh’s ‘The Level Playing Field’ and Mark Smith’s ‘Manyuk’ are among the particular highlights.
Julie Koh’s story ‘The Level Playing Field’ from her collection Capital Misfits is a brilliant and original allegory of the lives of artists which shows up the excesses of capitalism while poking gentle fun at world soccer. Although the game is never fully explained, there seems to be only individual competitors rather than teams with each “singing their individual anthems simultaneously”. According to the Chairman of the Board of the Level Playing Field, “on the Level Playing Field, everyone plays by the same rules…each player pursues his own interest for the good of all. The Level Playing Field is a showcase of the pure artistry of each man.”
However, below the field are scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust with people taken from the shipping containers from which they arrive, into the sewers and tunnel networks below the stadium. There they are to live and work, sewing the players’ uniforms by day and trimming the blades of the grass with scissors by night. Food and payment are scarce. The Manager claims as they all have “haunted stares”, they must remain invisible for the length of the game.
Mark Smith’s story ‘Manyuk’ is about Monica, an Aboriginal woman married to a white truck driver who has taken her away from her family, leaving her isolated with her newborn baby in Darwin while he trucks to Melbourne and Perth. By chance, she runs into an older Aboriginal woman from her past at the local supermarket who reminds her about the close kinship among Aboriginal people. “Las’ time I seen you, you was swingin’ on your Momma’s clothes line, gigglin’ and carryin’ on with your sister… Your brother, that T-bone, he in Berrimah now. Got six months, muckin’ up down there. Your Momma, she on dialysis; two times a week. Your aunty, that Molly, she lookin’ after her.”
Told from the first person point of view, ‘The Three Treasures’ by Melissa Beit is the story of George, a teenager who wants to make friends but whose single father is controlling every aspect of his life, forcing George to seek refuge in Taoism. Set in a nursing home, Eleanor Limprecht’s affecting and thoughtful story ‘On Ice’, juxtaposes the narrator nurse’s own love life love with that of the love between two patients, one of whom has dementia. Jennifer Down’s equally affecting story ‘Aokigahara’, tells the story of Cammy who travels to Japan to visit the site of her brother’s suicide. ‘Aokigahara’ is definitely a worthy winner of the 2014 Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Award. In ‘Better Things’, Balli Kaur Jaswal tells the story of an Indian migrant living in Melbourne whose dreams are thwarted by a difficult reality. The Sydney Morning Herald named Jaswal as one of the Best Young Australian Novelists in 2014 for her début novel Inheritance. Spoken word and slam poet, Omar Musa gained similar recognition in 2015 for his début novel Here Come the Dogs. Musa’s story ‘Supernova’ is a moving and funny take on a Malaysian-born Australian engineer obsessed with astronomy who returns to Malaysia to live and participate in the current election.
Only three stories in The Best Australian Stories 2015 are particularly unimpressive, although each was highlighted by one or other newspaper critic. John A. Scott’s vignette ‘Picasso: A Shorter Life’ presents nothing new in its portrayal of Picasso as a misogynist bastard regarding the women in his life. Another, Claire Corbett’s ‘2 or 3 Things I Know About You’ which features a teenage girl who sneaks into the house of a famous film director she’s obsessed with to read his diaries is neither powerful nor evocative and a third is littered with grammatical mistakes and poor sentence construction.
Through its inclusion of Goldie Goldbloom’s ‘The Pilgrim’s Way’, The Best Australian Stories 2015 raises concerns surrounding the definition of an ‘Australian’ story. Lohrey, in her introduction, does little to address the issue. If anything, she intentionally leaves it loosely defined, reflecting that, while the author must be an Australian, the story should stand out due to its own merit.
The only comprehensive attempt to define ‘Australian’ in the context of such a collection appears to be from Robert Manne in his introduction to The Best Australian Essays 2014. Manne admits his initial thought was that the essay should be “by an Australian citizen, resident or expatriate”. However, after reading essays by such writers he realised that the definition of an Australian essay was more complicated, as the essay itself, might have nothing to do with Australia. Manne reflects that, “it now strikes me as obvious that an annual collection of Australian essays which is not vitally interested in the peculiar and particular quality of life in this country would be both odd and somehow disconcerting”.
Goldie Goldbloom is an Australian born author residing in America. Her story ‘The Pilgrim’s Way’ is about an American family holidaying in Italy with no reference to the Australian way of life. The only other link to Australia, outside her place of birth, appears to be the story’s first publication in the literary magazine Meanjin. Surely, there must have been other short stories available for inclusion that would have had a connection to Australia and resonated with Australian readers.
However, overall The Best Australian Stories 2015 is an anthology that most readers will thoroughly enjoy, especially those who love the compact form and often thought-provoking nature of short stories.
-Annette Marfording
—————————————————————————————————–
Annette Marfording is a writer, broadcaster, and critic currently living in regional New South Wales. She was Program Director of the Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival until 2015. Her book Celebrating Australian Writing: Conversations with Australian Authors features 21 in-depth conversations with Australian authors on their books, central themes in their body of work, writing methods, central tips for aspiring writers and more. It is available from independent bookshops in Sydney and on the NSW Mid North Coast and online at University Co-operative Bookshop or LuLu Press. All profits from the sale of the book go to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
The Best Australian Stories 2015 is available from http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/best-australian-stories-2015
.
Rochford Street Review 