Fans of Bullwinkel’s recent novel, Headshot (which deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch, in that it’s a sturdy and interesting, well-written sports novel), may pause when they first lay their mitts on her debut collection of short stories, Belly Up. The first thing that struck this reader was the quote from Jeff VanderMeer on the rear cover. You tend to find, don’t you, that writers are drawn to like. You may find yourself asking: does that mean Belly Up is going to be weird? The answer (at times, resoundingly) is yes.
There are 17 stories contained herein (some of which run to 20 or 30 pages and some of which run for three, four, five or six pages) and running to just over 300 pages in total, it may feel like a slightly longer than normal collection of short stories but, if length bothers you, know that Belly Up is a book that speeds by, each story propulsive and arresting and characterful and mostly always unusual in one regard or another. The stories themselves rang from the straightforward (collection opener ‘Harp’ concerns a woman who works at a university who witnesses a car accident and is reminded of an old boyfriend’s uncle who managed to maintain two different families, one unbeknownst to the other, before expiring on a plan home one day; the car accident and the memory seem to push our narrator into a bout of restlessness that incorporates a visit to a harp concert and the possible beginning of an affair) to the downright unnerving (‘Arms Overhead’ charts the progress of two girls, themselves something like the characters in Peter Jackson’s film, Heavenly Creatures, as they explore the idea of cannibalism).
Inbetween these two extremes, you have stories that lean in the direction of the kind of beautiful, vivid omniscience you see in Headshot (collection closer ‘Clamour’ concerns a group of people visiting a medium – you hear from everyone and the ways in which the voices (clamour) rub against each other without stepping on toes is a true wonder to behold and lets you know, if you need telling, that Bullwinkel is a real name to watch) as well as stories set in other times and places (‘In the South the sand winds are our greatest enemy’ concerns two banished brothers whose – shall we say magic? – causes all manner of consternation within a prison infirmary), stories that feel like prosaic explorations of the supernatural (‘Burn’ concerns a man called Joe Engel who is asked to visit local widows on the night of their widowhood in order to see off the ghosts of their husbands should they come and visit; the story unravels fairtale-like, by which we mean it’s a case of threes, and doesn’t work out too well for Joe) and stories that feel like little puzzles requiring a bit of readerly parsing (see ‘Phylum’).
All told, the one thing you come away from Belly Up feeling is Bullwinkel’s sense of fun. Belly Up is a fun collection of short stories. More than this, though, particularly if you’ve read and rightly enjoyed Headshot, is that Headshot doesn’t give you quite the full range of Bullwinkel’s talents as Belly Up does. You read these two books in conjunction you’re going to come away with a real sense of – ooooh, Bullwinkel is a talent and we can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
And we didn’t even mention the story about the snake that pretends to be a pear…
Any Cop?: A real treat for short story fans, irrespective of whether your idea of a good short story is Kelly Link, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood or Dave Eggers.
Bookmunch 