Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags

by Shena Mackay

Shena Mackay, the Scottish author who was nominated for the Booker Prize for "The Orchard on Fire," presents a collection of short stories which conjure up nightmares of the unexpected from the everyday world.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944 and currently lives in London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also Honorary Visiting Professor to the MA in Writing at Middlesex University.

Her novels include the black comedy Redhill Rococo (1986), winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize; Dunedin (1992), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; and the acclaimed The Orchard on Fire (1995) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her novel Heligoland (2003) was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover is so bad it’s good, amirite? In the title story, Susan Vigo is on her way by train to give a speech at a writers’ workshop and running through possible plots for her mystery novel in progress. “Slaves to the Mushroom” is another great one that takes place on a mushroom farm. Mackay’s settings are often surprising, her vocabulary precise, and her portraits of young people as cutting as those of the aged are pitiful. This would serve as a great introduction to her style.

“All the Pubs in Soho” was a stand-out story. “It was his father’s vituperation about ‘those bloody pansies at Old Hollow’ that had brought Joe to the cottage on this empty summer holiday afternoon.” It’s 1956 in Kent and Joe is only eight years old, so it’s not too surprising that, ignorant of the slang, he shows up at Arthur and Guido’s expecting to find flowers dripping red. Their place becomes his haven from a home full of crying, excreting younger siblings and a conventional father who intends to send him to a private girls’ school in the autumn. That’s right, “Joe” is Josephine, who likes to wear boys’ clothes and insists on a male name. Mackay struck me as ahead of her time (rather like Rose Tremain with Sacred Country) in honouring Joe’s chosen pronouns and letting him imagine an adult future in which he’d keep company with Arthur and Guido’s bohemian, artistic set – the former is a poet, the latter a painter – and they’d take him round ‘all the pubs in Soho.’ But in a sheltered small town where everyone has a slur ready for the men, it is not to be. Things don’t end well, but thankfully not as badly as I was hoping, and Joe has plucked up the courage to resist his father. There’s all the emotional depth and character development of a novella in this 26-page story.

I’ve had a mixed experience with Mackay, but the one novel of hers I got on well with, The Orchard on Fire, also dwells on the shattered innocence of childhood. By contrast, most of the stories in this collection are grimy ones about lonely older people – especially elderly women – reminding me of Barbara Comyns or Barbara Pym at her darkest. “Where the Carpet Ends,” about the long-term residents of a shabby hotel, recalls The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. In “Violets and Strawberries in the Snow,” a man in a mental institution awaits a holiday visit from his daughters. “What do we do now?” he asks a fellow inmate. “We could hang ourselves in the tinsel” is the reply. It’s very black comedy indeed.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Bill Hsu]

I found this interesting enough, despite some reservations about the writing. Maybe it's the '70s/80s British humor that I don't get. I really can't commit to 400 pages of this, when I have a number of other books that I'm more excited to get to.

[Hilary G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am in no sense a writer, but after a Creative Writing course, I developed a taste for writing short stories and have written one or two I am not ashamed of, but I like to read short stories by good writers to show me how it's really done. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, which gives us eleven glimpses into other people's lives, people that might be described as 'ordinary' but for Shena Mackay. By virtue of her imagination and her pen (or computer) ordinary people become what might be described as 'extraordinary,' except that the overall message seems to be that behind their public personae, everyone is extraordinary.

The stories are quirky, often disturbing, sometimes quite dark. They reveal an understanding of people's behaviour and motivations, and although some of the actions of the characters seem extreme, even violent, they are a credible extrapolation of what people might do under certain types of pressure.

Shena Mackay is a good writer. I was quite pleased to see that she occasionally lapses into sentences so long that you have to read them twice to make sure of your understanding, because that is one of my own tendencies. She only does this occasionally, whereas I have to go back and chop up most of my sentences to make them comprehensible. I also noticed the occasional habit of constructing sentences in which the words are in an unusual order, a bit Germanic, almost as if English were not her first language, but she is Scottish so this is unlikely. Once I had noticed this, it was fun spotting them. But, please don't misunderstand me, Shena Mackay is a good writer, very sharp, very observant, who spins believable characters and events out of thin air, a very good storyteller.

PS - I meant to say, but forgot, what a great title! Who could pick this up and not wonder what it was about?

PPS - I also forgot to say that quite often Shena Mackay is funny. I love this example, out of the mouth of a guy with a refined and upmarket girlfriend, after lots of mange-tout. "I want real peas, without pods and out of a tin."

[Jessica McDonough · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe my problem with this book is I tried to read it straight through but I read a lot of short story books straight through and I have no problem. This one I had to keep starting stories over I kept falling asleep and forgetting where I was so I had to read stories over again and a lot of the stories were pretty dull but the good ones are pretty good. It's just not much is going on in any of the stories and half the stories really have no place or point the name of the book is highly enticing and it has nothing to do with the concept I thought it would be. I'd say this is a good bathroom reader to be ingested slowly over time I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more in that way.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite an odd collection of short stories, some were just plain bizarre, some just quirky, some very painful, others just a lark. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed all the stories, in fact some were an awful snooze to get thought, but there were some I enjoyed. I expected to find some familiar Brit-isms to revel in but it wasn’t until one of the last stories that I found something to latch on to when the characters drank Thackeray’s Old Peculiar Ale, which is a favorite of mine. The stories are of all different genres, from suspense – ‘Curry at the Laburnums’ to domestic angst - ‘Family Service, to the Lillian Hellmaneque ‘A Pair of Spoons’. MacKay has a couple of novels that are supposed to be on the market here in the US – ‘A Bowl of Cherries’ and ‘Dunedin’, but I don’t know if I’d ever be tempted to pick up another of her books. Perhaps part of the reason is because with a collection of stories there isn’t a flow that carries you though. A novel might do.

[Ariel Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much. When I began reading I was confused but then I realized it was a book of collective short stories. There were many stories that were funny, sad, dramatic, and just all out weird; which is noticeable in the chapter titles. Overall though, I recommend this book to many, the ones who enjoy gracious fiction, it is entertaining on many different levels.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories and a good introduction to this author. She sees the consequences that arise from the tiniest things that happen. I wonder if she will date though. I read her in the late 1990s I think. Anyone read her more recently?

[Nia Forrester · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not for the feint of heart. Heavy stuff in this collection, haunting stuff. Stuff to keep you up at night.

[Tejla]

BAL recommendation

[AF · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another delightful tid bit, but never finished it.