Flatrock Sunners - Sarah Totton
This story – let there be no mistake – stands memorably on its own as a rite of passage of a boy’s growing up among a ‘mythology’ of not only real ‘imaginary friends’ but also real “imaginary enemies”, of unknown authorship (the protagonist’s or some other force?), yet presumably a mythology facilitated by his father who was in turn created by the author whose name is appended to the story.
A story’s standing on its own can be changed or enhanced or downgraded (or simply sent along fault-lines it never intended) by the context in which one reads it. Here, for me, it is indeed enhanced. But it doesn’t need enhancing. It just is. But any potential enhancement, even if not strictly required for creating this as a wonderful story in itself (which it undeniably is), can never be unwelcome. Here we have echoes of the ratcheting in time from ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ (here a clock not a watch), the adult conspiracies as seen by the young protagonist, the figures on the shoreline that here become even more pliable as physical structures, the threats of the real ‘imaginary enemies’. It also has the Peter Pan type of timelessness. And a sense of the utterly sad creatures from the end of ‘Bryson Feeds Families’. Feeds Families being a key phrase to keep in mind when proceeding further, perhaps. We shall see. In any event, I love the concept of its flatrock sunners, its petting zoo, and all the filmic pliability of Totton’s story. It needs nothing else but itself. (17 August 09 - another 5 hours later)
Stone Whispers - Tim Casson
I wish my wife and I had found this solitary island by mistake instead of Sark when we were on holiday there many years ago. The story’s wonderful ‘genius loci’ is strangely combined with its opposite: an explicit dislocation. A reclusive (sexless?) couple, George unpredictable and gauche, Celia a poet, are ostensibly ‘invaded’ by some sensual hooray-henries in a boat which they can hardly steer. Milk cows, if not the beef ones from ‘Bryson Feeds Families’. Plus a time paradox as if from the blend of the previous stories, represented by a slowing and quickening gramophone and story-telling scene narrating millennia without account of any inactive periods. A ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ scenario (that also had a time paradox and cromlechs (or caves of sorts), I recall) where I can imagine George and Celia being ‘flatrock sunners’ basking before vanishing into the stone whispers of Celia’s own poem. Or have they vanished into this very story, as if into its word cromlechs, where their only family issue will be those who once were made by dead bones? Only by reading it will you be able to unlock what I say. Not a spoiler, but its opposite. (17 August 09 - another 3
