Where the Cross Turns Over: Australian-based Stories, by Sylvia Kelso
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Where the Cross Turns Over: Australian Based Stories by Sylvia Anne Kelso
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
According to the back cover of the print edition, of Where the Cross Turns Over: Australian-Based Stories, these stories “happen where the Cross turns over: a regional urban Australian backyard, a regional suburban housing development, a state capital, over a century ago; an Outback waterhole. Another regional townscape, whose characters end up off-Earth; a future planet whose fauna, are at least, unusual. But even the Outback can prove weird here.”
Weird indeed, and not just the Outback, either. I want to look briefly at three of the collection’s six fine tales. “The Cretaceous Border” is the first tale, set in the fictional Australian town of Ibisville. Like all the stories in this fine new collection by Sylvia Kelso, this is rich with vivid and strong details of place and culture, flora and fauna, or how something is done. I had to remind myself that parts of Australia are tropical, green, and dense.
One day, when the narrator is out on her morning run, she comes across something new, strange foot prints, and a dead cane-toad that’s “been ripped apart, and legs, and head and bits of gut spread all over [her] concrete path.” A day or so later, she hears sounds of an “almighty brawl” under the “big, ground-sweeping fronds of the Chinese fan-palm in the back-yard corner.” She feels intense, wet heat,” and the smell of beast, of jungle. Almost a week later, she finds a dead rat, also gutted. “And hanging in the just-dawn air, the smell. Rotting leaves, swamp water heat … the tang of beast.” And stranger foot-prints, the tracks of something that shouldn’t be in her back yard.
When she and her running partner, Cat, decide to trap whatever this creature is, to their surprise, they find a raptor, a micro- allosaur in the cage. How did this happen? One answer is an alternate universe next door, the border seems to be in the back yard. Does the allosaur come back? Will there be more strange visitors?
In “Acreage,” also set in Ibisville, we meet Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, suburban folk, who happen to be interested in local history. Mr. Asquith discovers a wild and woolly past, and “tales of wickedness and braggadocio,” of murder and mayhem. He laments the lack of “bushrangers,” the Australian equivalent of outlaws and highwaymen. Google says they are “any of the bandits of the Australian bush, or outback, who harassed the settlers, miners, and Aborigines of the frontier in the late 18th and 19th centuries, whose exploits figure prominently in Australian history and folklore.”
Then, he starts calling his wife the name of another woman, Lu. He swears at her, an unheard-of event. He’s strange compulsions, he has to start a fire, and sets the compost pile ablaze. He has to buy stockmen’s’ spurs. A clear case of possession, it seems, of a bushranger up to no good.
What to do? Mrs. Asquith seeks help, from a psychic paranormal expert. The past, it seems, is the present. How? Is their yard a crossing, “a place where the walls thin…”? The spirit has to be dislodged. And be careful what you wish for.
The last story I want to take a look at here is “Slick,” one of my favorites. This story is about the intersection of the mythical and the mundane. I would also call it a prose poem; the language is so lush and beautiful. In a waterhole, the narrator discovers a “raggedy, ten-foot wide oil slick, not quite above or under water.” But is it really oil? Her mare reacts fear, stares at what is it? She falls asleep there and hears music, something like a song, and she finds herself “[imagining] all the water in the world, all the world there has ever been. And it has a memory. It remembers everything from the first beginning. Fog. Mist. Cloud. Raindrop. Snow. Running water …”
She awakes crying, “water answering water.” It comes to her, the slick out of the water, now a male. Is it a god, water made incarnate? Regardless, the narrator and this water-made-flesh make love, they make, a baby, a girl. Will she choose land or water, this child of myth?
The rest of the tale are no less compelling: the travails of a woman doctor in a time when speed limits were eight miles an hour, aliens seeking fireworks and two unlikely human lovers, and a distant world recreating certain parts of French culture and a mysterious sharpshooter. I was struck by the strong women characters as well. These beautifully written stories will linger, and come back to the reader. Kudos for Kelso’s research, which is deftly woven into the story, research she clearly loves. The history that inspired some of the stories, the historical personages, the details of a how particular works, all add depth and meaning. These stories are true in their worlds. Don’t be put off by Australian terminology and slang, and the names of plants and creatures. Most can be easily understood in context, or quickly looked up. They are a pleasure to read.
Highly recommended.
View all my reviews
Where the Cross Turns Over: Australian Based Stories by Sylvia Anne KelsoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
According to the back cover of the print edition, of Where the Cross Turns Over: Australian-Based Stories, these stories “happen where the Cross turns over: a regional urban Australian backyard, a regional suburban housing development, a state capital, over a century ago; an Outback waterhole. Another regional townscape, whose characters end up off-Earth; a future planet whose fauna, are at least, unusual. But even the Outback can prove weird here.”
Weird indeed, and not just the Outback, either. I want to look briefly at three of the collection’s six fine tales. “The Cretaceous Border” is the first tale, set in the fictional Australian town of Ibisville. Like all the stories in this fine new collection by Sylvia Kelso, this is rich with vivid and strong details of place and culture, flora and fauna, or how something is done. I had to remind myself that parts of Australia are tropical, green, and dense.
One day, when the narrator is out on her morning run, she comes across something new, strange foot prints, and a dead cane-toad that’s “been ripped apart, and legs, and head and bits of gut spread all over [her] concrete path.” A day or so later, she hears sounds of an “almighty brawl” under the “big, ground-sweeping fronds of the Chinese fan-palm in the back-yard corner.” She feels intense, wet heat,” and the smell of beast, of jungle. Almost a week later, she finds a dead rat, also gutted. “And hanging in the just-dawn air, the smell. Rotting leaves, swamp water heat … the tang of beast.” And stranger foot-prints, the tracks of something that shouldn’t be in her back yard.
When she and her running partner, Cat, decide to trap whatever this creature is, to their surprise, they find a raptor, a micro- allosaur in the cage. How did this happen? One answer is an alternate universe next door, the border seems to be in the back yard. Does the allosaur come back? Will there be more strange visitors?
In “Acreage,” also set in Ibisville, we meet Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, suburban folk, who happen to be interested in local history. Mr. Asquith discovers a wild and woolly past, and “tales of wickedness and braggadocio,” of murder and mayhem. He laments the lack of “bushrangers,” the Australian equivalent of outlaws and highwaymen. Google says they are “any of the bandits of the Australian bush, or outback, who harassed the settlers, miners, and Aborigines of the frontier in the late 18th and 19th centuries, whose exploits figure prominently in Australian history and folklore.”
Then, he starts calling his wife the name of another woman, Lu. He swears at her, an unheard-of event. He’s strange compulsions, he has to start a fire, and sets the compost pile ablaze. He has to buy stockmen’s’ spurs. A clear case of possession, it seems, of a bushranger up to no good.
What to do? Mrs. Asquith seeks help, from a psychic paranormal expert. The past, it seems, is the present. How? Is their yard a crossing, “a place where the walls thin…”? The spirit has to be dislodged. And be careful what you wish for.
The last story I want to take a look at here is “Slick,” one of my favorites. This story is about the intersection of the mythical and the mundane. I would also call it a prose poem; the language is so lush and beautiful. In a waterhole, the narrator discovers a “raggedy, ten-foot wide oil slick, not quite above or under water.” But is it really oil? Her mare reacts fear, stares at what is it? She falls asleep there and hears music, something like a song, and she finds herself “[imagining] all the water in the world, all the world there has ever been. And it has a memory. It remembers everything from the first beginning. Fog. Mist. Cloud. Raindrop. Snow. Running water …”
She awakes crying, “water answering water.” It comes to her, the slick out of the water, now a male. Is it a god, water made incarnate? Regardless, the narrator and this water-made-flesh make love, they make, a baby, a girl. Will she choose land or water, this child of myth?
The rest of the tale are no less compelling: the travails of a woman doctor in a time when speed limits were eight miles an hour, aliens seeking fireworks and two unlikely human lovers, and a distant world recreating certain parts of French culture and a mysterious sharpshooter. I was struck by the strong women characters as well. These beautifully written stories will linger, and come back to the reader. Kudos for Kelso’s research, which is deftly woven into the story, research she clearly loves. The history that inspired some of the stories, the historical personages, the details of a how particular works, all add depth and meaning. These stories are true in their worlds. Don’t be put off by Australian terminology and slang, and the names of plants and creatures. Most can be easily understood in context, or quickly looked up. They are a pleasure to read.
Highly recommended.
View all my reviews
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