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Anna Scott encounters energy and unease in two short story collections from Parthian.


Circle Games
Jo Mazelis



Parthian
£7.99 Paperback
ISBN 1902638581


Fresh Apples
Rachel Trezise



Parthian
£7.99 Paperback
ISBN 1902638573


Characterised by an airy forthrightness, Rachel Trezise’s collection of short stories charts the troubled process of growing up and the consequent shifts in expectation as youthful illusions are shed. Though often damaged, her protagonists are a resilient lot, full of pluck and a sharp sense of humour which stands them in good stead given the depression and poverty underlying their daily existence.

   Set predominantly in and around the Rhondda, ‘a valley of closing down coal mines and despairing redundant men’, Trezise’s stories explore the realities of economic hardship. Instead of laughter lines there are ‘Valley Lines…caused by stress, strife, poverty, alcohol, drugs, chain–smoking..’. These are enclosed communities, and even those who succeed in making money don’t up sticks and leave, choosing instead to drive around in E–Type Jags in a land of Escorts and Cortinas, enjoying the attention their wealth brings.

   Mooching teenagers who spend their time sniffing wallpaper adhesive, setting off forest fires, drinking to excess and taking cocaine populate Trezise’s work.

   Sex is, inevitably, a major preoccupation and whether they’re getting it or not there’s lots of talk about "poking". Perhaps an absence of role models explains the lack of aspiration which seems to uniformly shroud these youngsters, but it doesn’t help that their sense of national identity, in common with that of many of the more mature characters, appears to be suspended in free–fall.

   A Welshman sits in a restaurant and, on hearing his ‘mother tongue’ spoken, exclaims, "What a fucking God–awful language". In ‘The Joneses’, Lissa, a seductive redhead with an exotic Italian surname doesn’t want to marry her boyfriend, a Jones, because ‘everyone in this street is called Jones’. Meanwhile Iolo, a bisexual drug abuser, is embarrassingly lumbered with a name which ‘Nobody in South Wales would dream of calling their son..’.

   There’s also the gaping chasm between an Americanised culture of
self–gratification and the reality of life in the valleys. Gemma, who probably isn’t Tom Jones’ daughter, though he was certainly one of her mother’s ex–shags, fantasises about leaving the council estate behind in favour of ‘a Los Angeles pool party’. Alex, a horny sixteen–year–old, dreams about the aforementioned Lissa and, on waking, reflects that the only word used in the dream was "Hey", finding this surprising given ‘I’m not even American’. Finally, there’s Jacky, a glamorous divorcée who, contemplating the tell–tale sign of cocaine abuse burned through the septum of her nose, bitterly reflects ‘some modern American princess she’d turned into’.

   The quiet moments of realisation in Trezise’s stories can sometimes be laboured. As Iolo embraces Caitlin, a woman for whom he instinctively cares, his knowledge that any prospect of a future with her is doomed has already been gleaned by the reader, rendering his somewhat heavy–handed thought process unnecessary. This is a problem too with ‘The Magician’ which, though it is great at evoking the atmosphere of drug–fuelled partying, suffers from a certain slackness in structure which makes it too lengthy for what it has to say.

   Despite the occasional lapse into over–writing, Trezise’s stories are full of inventiveness and energy. Shot through with a trenchant wit they pierce the most gloomy of situations, a divorce becomes ‘ugly but necessary, like a cervical smear’ while an aspiring freelance photographer sees wedding contracts ‘like dwarf sculptors wielding chisels’, chipping away at her soul. Although the collection contains some moments of clumsiness, the title story ‘Fresh Apples’, provides ample proof of Trezise’s talent. A taut and perfectly balanced account of a nerdy teen, it successfully captures the solipsistic awkwardness of adolescence, and the intensely claustrophobic nature of life in a dead–end community in a few brief
pages.

   Prosaic though the nature of everyday life may be, Mazelis’ latest collection of short stories is permeated with an undercurrent of barely suppressed unease in which the ordinary is transformed into something altogether more disturbing. Capturing the frequently shaky basis on which her characters interrelate, Mazelis explores love in its various manifestations, together with the complicated games it causes people to play, both with themselves and with one another.

   The fantasy surrounding love is juxtaposed with a reality beset with
misunderstanding, exploitation and heartbreak. ‘The Pendulum’ encapsulates love’s frailty and the ease with which two people who share the same emotion can misinterpret the other’s feelings.

   The words "I think I love you" transform the girl into seventh heaven, but are then undermined by the boy’s nervous ‘Beavis and Butthead kind of laugh’. A Canadian working in Germany sits at a bar and, despite his view of ‘romantic love’ as ‘bullshit’, proceeds to fall head over heels for a girl with the face ‘of a glowing Botticelli angel’. However, by the end of the evening, warming to the attentions of a local prostitute, he concedes ‘He might as well have fallen for a woman in a painting or a statue or a movie’.

   In one of the darker stories, ‘True Crime’, Michelle fantasises about the mysterious stranger who watches her surreptitiously during her dance class. Michelle’s mother suffers from a morbid imagination and believes that her obsession with the horror movies she watches ‘might actually wind up summoning bad things out of the darkness’. As the story progresses her neuroses seem to shape the action towards its unsettling denouement, and love’s young dream proves to be a particularly dangerous illusion.

   The sense of something sinister lurking in the wings is a common theme. Ethan is faced with a life which he believes to be pointless and gains relief by imagining that he is holding a gun to his head and can ‘blow it all away’. He grows up, sorts his life out, and then, in a hideous stroke of irony, is held at gunpoint by a man in a Mickey Mouse mask whose cartoon grin seems ‘suddenly maniacal and monstrous’. In another story Elizabeth has an encounter with a potential future stepmother.

   Although Sally–Anne sits in obedient silence in company, when she encounters Elizabeth on her own she is suddenly full of a malevolent witchiness, darting a look at the young girl which gives her ‘the sensation that I was about to be eaten’. Meanwhile, a vengeful woman whose partner has been stolen from her by another pours her vitriol into her art, working evil through her violent representation of her love rival’s image.

   Another dominant theme is that of control. A mother–in–law takes up the reins of her son’s relationship, scheming to release him from his pregnant wife who snoozes, blissfully unaware, in the back of the car. Another man, subject to the will of his girlfriend, meekly walks her Vietnamese pot–bellied pig, whilst the teenager in ‘Frog Boy’ exercises the ultimate control over his own destiny in response to taunts about his webbed fingers and toes.

   Mazelis plays with the reader, introducing the unexpected by the back door. Fearlessly scrutinising the desires and impulses of her characters she refuses to avoid the unpleasant, segueing nightmarish fantasies into reality. Illuminating the dark corners of the soul as well as everyday acts of kindness and single revelatory moments of love, Mazelis has produced an imaginatively written collection which draws strength from the all–too–human flaws and weaknesses of its characters.