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Taking Doreen Out Of The Sky

by Alan Beard (Goodreads Author)

4.5 of 5 stars 4.50 · rating details · 6 ratings · 4 reviews

Alan Beard’s stories evoke a disturbing world of supressed passion and unpredictable violence. They are by turns comic, tender and unsettling. The setting is a recognizable one of music, football, stolen sex and cheap drugs. Characters struggle with their conflicting desires and try to come to terms with loss – of a job, of a marriage, of illusions. Framed by the complex u...more

Published (first published 1997)

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Apr 25, 2012 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit-fic, need-to-review, short-stories

This review is a placeholder, a review marker, because what I want to say is not necessarily corresponding with the keys that I am pushing down at the moment. And this is my fault. What I want to write is beyond what I'm going to be able to clack-clack down now. This, quite possibly, is unfair to the writer. Alan, if you are offended, you have my address. Have at me.

So...this book is deceptive. It quietly traveled in my bag with me for weeks and weeks, and I read it very slowly, story by story...more This review is a placeholder, a review marker, because what I want to say is not necessarily corresponding with the keys that I am pushing down at the moment. And this is my fault. What I want to write is beyond what I'm going to be able to clack-clack down now. This, quite possibly, is unfair to the writer. Alan, if you are offended, you have my address. Have at me.

So...this book is deceptive. It quietly traveled in my bag with me for weeks and weeks, and I read it very slowly, story by story, usually. These stories did not astound me. I don't think I once gasped or laughed uproariously, or choked on the emergency fiber-one bar I keep in my bag with me for days when there's no time for proper eating.

That could be a bad thing. Or not. Because after I finished the book, I thought "hmmmm. Nice." and then put it on top of some other books on my nightstand. Nice Doreen, I thought, and then I put some other book in my bag with my emergency fiber one bar and traipsed off.

But Doreen, she didn't leave me. Nice Doreen kept pace with me and tumbled through my thoughts. Sometimes when thinking back on the stories, the characters would make me think of people that I just talked to and then drove away from. And what is that? Is that me having early dementia twinges, or is that the mark of a really good writer? If I write "I don't know" now as an answer, should I schedule an appointment with a neurologist?

I'm thinking no. I'm thinking Beard has tricked me, though, and I need more time to talk about these stories and the writing in them. So I'm going to go away now and eat my fiber one bar somewhere, while I really gnaw on the ideas in this book.

7.15.12

This book is still with me. Why does it resonate when the stories are so normal? This is the work of someone who either knows exactly what he is getting at or is content to lay the story bare and let the reader get there in his or her own timing. That, to me, is significant. It is risky and it is genius. It frustrates me as a reader and extrovert to not be able to communicate what these stories have in common — what it is that I cannot name that is so valuable as to remain long after the reading— but there it is; I cannot decipher the tonal center of these stories. There's living, longing, melancholy, but there is more than that and merely writing those words could describe any number of short stories.

My poor copy of this book is well loved by now of course. Living and everyday motion has seen to that. That is what happens when you take stories with you wherever you go. And that is what happens in these stories. (less)

11 likes · like · see review

Nov 06, 2009 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I can’t imagine this remaining out of print. I am lucky enough to have procured a secondhand copy on amazon. Count yourself lucky if you get to own a copy too.

All the stories in this collection focus on lives the shape of roads and council estates in the English Midlands. One story, Cheer Up Lucky Lips Forever, involves the narrator’s train journey interrupted: he leans from a window to stare through a fog into his memories made physically real by coincidence, the same house that centres his tra...more
I can’t imagine this remaining out of print. I am lucky enough to have procured a secondhand copy on amazon. Count yourself lucky if you get to own a copy too.

All the stories in this collection focus on lives the shape of roads and council estates in the English Midlands. One story, Cheer Up Lucky Lips Forever, involves the narrator’s train journey interrupted: he leans from a window to stare through a fog into his memories made physically real by coincidence, the same house that centres his train of thoughts. The same device of Larkin in I remember, I remember and the resonance of that poem’s last line, its realisation that ‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.’

The memories and desires of nowhere people (nowhere because everywhere) are embodied in superbly crafted short ‘short stories’, sparing, stripped to the bone language – most difficult to achieve the rhythms, cadences and imagery of theme and mood using the simplest vocabulary. The composer Schoenberg once remarked that there are ‘still many good tunes to be written in C major’: Beard has gone further than good tunes to create something like street opera, bare skeletal structures to hold great passions. It’s another mark of the craftsmanship that the stories are deftly controlled by accidentals and transpositions from major to minor.

On;y a purblind reader could fail to see that Beard’s characters are people first, and that from the bare sketching of their essential outlines how immediate is the recognition of the basic foibles, contradictions, passions and moralities of all classes of people. Outwardly ‘Shameless’ territtory or of some award-winning television documentary looking down on the lives of the ghettoised and exotically awful, the stories in this collection are generous in spirit and guide the view upwards. A generous writer, of course, includes humour and playfulness, and these are evident throughout.

There is one motif that weaves through the stories, a theme almost. It is about the secret places behind the weary urban greyness. Often, some woods or hills or trees, some hint of a border beyond towards which in memory or presence confused desire gropes; then there are somewheres/nowheres like where “they stashed the dustbins, a corner of multi-drainpipes and clogged drain and nicked into the building like a wound.” (in Dad, Mum, Paula and Tom). These wonderful stories are doubly rewarding in the pleasure they give and the startle into our own time and memories.

You can read the first story in the collection, Saturday in the ‘Sac, on Alan Beard’s website (www.alanbeard.net/). Then go and buy the book.

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6 likes · like · see review

Jan 10, 2010 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: gr-authors, great-short-story-collections, literary-fiction

For a long time I was too preoccupied to really get these stories. They are not the sort of stories to immediately transport you. But they do transport you, when you're ready. The title story is sad and beautiful. It's a good place to start.

The world of Alan Beard's stories, in and around Birmingham, is wonderfully detailed. The stories are poignant: people in or out of work, in a relationship or marriage, or looking to be in one... I really like Beard's description, his characters' observations...more

10 likes · like · see review

Jun 24, 2012 Ken rated it 5 of 5 stars

What haunts you? Sitting there late at night, in the silence, while that beer on the table gets warmer, and the rollback of the years flashes before your eyes? In many ways, the tales in Alan Beard’s superb collection feel like ghost stories. Not in the traditional sense -- no white spectres wandering the halls or loud rappings on the walls from unseen hands. Rather, the citizens of the council flats in and around Birmingham are all haunted by their own past. What could they have been? Or how co...more What haunts you? Sitting there late at night, in the silence, while that beer on the table gets warmer, and the rollback of the years flashes before your eyes? In many ways, the tales in Alan Beard’s superb collection feel like ghost stories. Not in the traditional sense -- no white spectres wandering the halls or loud rappings on the walls from unseen hands. Rather, the citizens of the council flats in and around Birmingham are all haunted by their own past. What could they have been? Or how could their lives have been better?

With razor sharp prose, a dry British wit, and fearless dedication to not pulling any punches on his characters, Alan Beard gives you the West Midlands in all its grim glory. Akin to great Japanese writers, Beard cuts his prose to the bone, not bothering to waste any words on showing off his writing skills. It’s important, as that style gives the stories much more character as well as imbuing them with that superb reserved understatement that is born and bred in citizens of the Midlands.

As for those citizens, in Beard’s world, things just didn’t go their way, or at least not the way they had expected. In the better tales -- “Saturday in the ‘Sac,” “Come See About Me,” “Country Life,” and of course the title story -- we encounter locals who sat still as the world moved past them. For the father in “Saturday in the ‘Sac” the neighborhood is just not what it used to be. For the husband in “Taking Doreen Out of the Sky,” he’s just come nose-to-nose with the brick wall of his life. At times, Beard deals the harsh realities as they are, never-overstating the point or beating us over the head with the outcome. It is what it is. At other times, he lets a wry sense of humor punch things up, as with “Country Life” where a born-again cuckold is confronted by the other man (and both find they have more in common than expected). In all, the characters are haunted by what could have been -- that other woman or the better gig or the doors that slammed shut in their faces years ago.

Beard, superbly confident in his prose, pulls no punches but still loves his characters enough to give them great heart, even if they fall flat on their faces. The stories are honest and sad, but most importantly, they ring true. You almost want to buy the characters a pint for their troubles -- anything to relieve the burden of their own lives. The sad fact is that this great collection is now out-of-print, so you’ll have to dig to find a copy. Still, the effort is worth every line. (less)

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About Alan Beard

Alan Beard's stories have appeared in magazines such as London Magazine, Malahat Review, Panurge, Critical Quarterly; ezines such as Vestal Review, Taint magazine; anthologies such as Neonlit, England Calling, Tell Tales 3. His first collection came out in 1999 (Picador) and was called Taking Doreen Out Of The Sky. His second 'You Don't Have to Say' came out in September 2010 from Tindal Street Pr...more

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