EVERYTHING WE HOPED FOR
Pip Adam
VUP, $30, pbk
I have often heard commentators remark on the bleakness of many New Zealand-made films, especially those made by first-time directors.
Reading Pip Adam's collection of short stories, I wondered if this was also true of our debuting short-story writers.
Of the 23 stories in this book, most were cheerless.
If not sick, dying, suicidal or alcoholic, depression, guilt and lost chances figured largely in the characters' lives.
And the necessarily brief length of short stories meant leaving those characters in a kind of limbo, not knowing whether or not they succeeded in overcoming any of the problems they faced.
I had forgotten how unsatisfying short stories can be in this regard.
Adam writes in plain, spare prose, which doesn't always follow literary conventions.
Paragraphs can combine differing ideas and hints of what is to follow.
While not enjoying the emphasis on darkness in her themes, I could admire the way she provided immediate recognition of settings and the people within them.
She gives convincing snapshots of lives one might not otherwise encounter - soldiers back from Dili, women in prison, and in a more light-hearted story, what it's like to be the uncool wife of a newly famous celebrity confronting his fans in London.
The last three stories in this collection, including that of the celebrity's wife, became gradually softer in tone.
My favourite story had to wait until the end.
Daisy, the toddler whose passion was pushing a trolley that had been built by someone else's grandfather in a workshop lit by a single bulb, was a beautifully observed picture of the innocence and obsessions of a small child.
It helped to cancel out the depressive feelings left after reading some of the preceding stories.
Patricia Thwaites is a retired school teacher.
