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A Grave in the Air
Sweeping from Nazi Germany in 1939 to the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, Stephen Henighan's A Grave in the Air is a masterful sequence of stories. In these tales, dominated by Central and Eastern European themes, readers are transported across borders and into the lives of characters who have something serious at stake, people enmeshed in acts of destruction, and people redeemed through honour and grace.
There are stories of betrayal, such as "Beyond Bliss," where a young British woman uses sex, duplicity, and her connections to an Eastern European exile to become a partner in a Canadian literary press; luminous studies of introspection and character, such as "Freedom Square," in which a Romanian photographer's desire to escape her mother country yields to surrender to it; and ironic stories of historical displacement, such as "A Sense of Time," in which an erotic memory takes life for a Canadian expatriate in England.
The two long stories, which bracket the collection, summarize its themes. In the opening story, a British businessman relies on the sporting spirit to try to avert the onset of the Second World War; in the title story, a weary foreign correspondent, shaken by his encounter with a band's disturbing groupie, must face his own truth about ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
Whether moving readers to reflection or providing engaging entertainment, Henighan's prose is sharp and clean. Once again, he is as instructive in his understanding of peoples and cultures as he is instinctive in taking us inside the worlds that shape them.
There are stories of betrayal, such as "Beyond Bliss," where a young British woman uses sex, duplicity, and her connections to an Eastern European exile to become a partner in a Canadian literary press; luminous studies of introspection and character, such as "Freedom Square," in which a Romanian photographer's desire to escape her mother country yields to surrender to it; and ironic stories of historical displacement, such as "A Sense of Time," in which an erotic memory takes life for a Canadian expatriate in England.
The two long stories, which bracket the collection, summarize its themes. In the opening story, a British businessman relies on the sporting spirit to try to avert the onset of the Second World War; in the title story, a weary foreign correspondent, shaken by his encounter with a band's disturbing groupie, must face his own truth about ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
Whether moving readers to reflection or providing engaging entertainment, Henighan's prose is sharp and clean. Once again, he is as instructive in his understanding of peoples and cultures as he is instinctive in taking us inside the worlds that shape them.
223 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2007
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August 9, 2017
From my review for the Times Literary Supplement:
The eight stories in Stephen Henighan’s new collection, A Grave in the Air, ask what it is to be an outsider. Characters are repeatedly set apart, alien to the culture, social class, or era in which they move. Immigrants, refugees, foreign correspondents and others struggle to maintain their identities when the structures which defined them have altered or disappeared.
“The Killing Past” hinges on a difficult relation to what has gone before. Bart’s family immigrated to Canada from the UK; the resulting discontinuity still unnerves him. He becomes increasingly devoted to investigating the family legend of his great-grandfather, AB Chevret, who attempted to make fair play an antidote to war.
Chevret, haunted by the terrible human cost of the Great War, travelled with amateur footballers throughout the Axis preaching sportsmanship. More than half a century later, Bart follows his trail, hoping to discover a new sense of self. At home, Bart’s girlfriend considered him a faux-immigrant who cannot understand what it means to be displaced; in Germany, he is a brash new-worlder, exhuming what many believe best forgotten. That the tribalism Chevret challenged couldn’t be overcome in 1939, we know: that the same forces will doom Bart’s quest is the unhappy suspicion at the heart of the story.
Alienation can also be domestic, and some find themselves strangers within their own families. In “Freedom Square”, Doina, a young woman with ambitions to become a photographer, explains why she wants to leave Romania for work in Germany, but misunderstanding means “her mother’s dark eyes were already foreign”. A shared vision has become impossible, and Doina’s eventual homecoming, like many in the book, will therefore be unfulfilling. Changes, once made, cannot be undone, but as the powers that shape and define people are never static, nor can they be avoided.
“A Grave in the Air” brings all these themes skilfully together when Latifa, a young Bosnian Muslim living in Germany, learns her family history from Darryl, a Canadian ex-journalist who would rather forget the former Yugoslavia.
Darryl works for a cultural programme, but has received a fax asking that he attend a war crimes tribunal. Faced with a return to his difficult past, he instead contemplates escaping into art, “something that lasts”. Culture and history are inseparable, however, and his hastily constructed ivory tower crumbles when Latifa arrives with a band he is chaperoning in Weimar.
Recognising her surname as that of a Bosnian friend, Darryl approaches her, but Latifa “will never be Bosnian again” she tells him: she is Slovenian now. Shocked and frustrated by her denials, Darryl must face his own. He recalls Sarajevo, where he stayed long after his editors lost interest, and Srebrenica. Perhaps no one has come that far: Bosnia is after all “down the road from Buchenwald,” a symbol of inhumanity that lies just outside the city.
Latifa’s family have hidden their background from her. Although her detachment is honestly come by, it seems nevertheless to have left her feeling empty. Daryl’s detachment is self-imposed, but the effects are similar. The happiness of both depends on their shared journey into memory, however difficult, and on accepting the terrible past.
This is the most poignant of Henighan’s themes: the importance and value of human action in the face of (and despite what the reader, with inescapable hindsight, already knows to be) a terrible political and historical impotence. Henighan is not shy of the twentieth century’s big subjects, and puts them to effective use. “The Killing Past”, which opens the book, and the title story, which closes it, are especially successful at highlighting the strange tension of tales whose outcomes are already known to us through history.
The effect depends on uncompromisingly direct prose coupled with equally direct access to characters’ thoughts and feelings, so that we ourselves are never foreign to these tales of foreignness. This can have its drawbacks, though: when the author simply reports a character’s emotional state and moves on, the reader is prevented from doing the often satisfying emotional maths a more oblique approach might encourage. A coolness sometimes threatens to settle across the pages – but Henighan’s underlying humanity, his interest in the average person in often less than average circumstances, almost always heats things up again.
The eight stories in Stephen Henighan’s new collection, A Grave in the Air, ask what it is to be an outsider. Characters are repeatedly set apart, alien to the culture, social class, or era in which they move. Immigrants, refugees, foreign correspondents and others struggle to maintain their identities when the structures which defined them have altered or disappeared.
“The Killing Past” hinges on a difficult relation to what has gone before. Bart’s family immigrated to Canada from the UK; the resulting discontinuity still unnerves him. He becomes increasingly devoted to investigating the family legend of his great-grandfather, AB Chevret, who attempted to make fair play an antidote to war.
Chevret, haunted by the terrible human cost of the Great War, travelled with amateur footballers throughout the Axis preaching sportsmanship. More than half a century later, Bart follows his trail, hoping to discover a new sense of self. At home, Bart’s girlfriend considered him a faux-immigrant who cannot understand what it means to be displaced; in Germany, he is a brash new-worlder, exhuming what many believe best forgotten. That the tribalism Chevret challenged couldn’t be overcome in 1939, we know: that the same forces will doom Bart’s quest is the unhappy suspicion at the heart of the story.
Alienation can also be domestic, and some find themselves strangers within their own families. In “Freedom Square”, Doina, a young woman with ambitions to become a photographer, explains why she wants to leave Romania for work in Germany, but misunderstanding means “her mother’s dark eyes were already foreign”. A shared vision has become impossible, and Doina’s eventual homecoming, like many in the book, will therefore be unfulfilling. Changes, once made, cannot be undone, but as the powers that shape and define people are never static, nor can they be avoided.
“A Grave in the Air” brings all these themes skilfully together when Latifa, a young Bosnian Muslim living in Germany, learns her family history from Darryl, a Canadian ex-journalist who would rather forget the former Yugoslavia.
Darryl works for a cultural programme, but has received a fax asking that he attend a war crimes tribunal. Faced with a return to his difficult past, he instead contemplates escaping into art, “something that lasts”. Culture and history are inseparable, however, and his hastily constructed ivory tower crumbles when Latifa arrives with a band he is chaperoning in Weimar.
Recognising her surname as that of a Bosnian friend, Darryl approaches her, but Latifa “will never be Bosnian again” she tells him: she is Slovenian now. Shocked and frustrated by her denials, Darryl must face his own. He recalls Sarajevo, where he stayed long after his editors lost interest, and Srebrenica. Perhaps no one has come that far: Bosnia is after all “down the road from Buchenwald,” a symbol of inhumanity that lies just outside the city.
Latifa’s family have hidden their background from her. Although her detachment is honestly come by, it seems nevertheless to have left her feeling empty. Daryl’s detachment is self-imposed, but the effects are similar. The happiness of both depends on their shared journey into memory, however difficult, and on accepting the terrible past.
This is the most poignant of Henighan’s themes: the importance and value of human action in the face of (and despite what the reader, with inescapable hindsight, already knows to be) a terrible political and historical impotence. Henighan is not shy of the twentieth century’s big subjects, and puts them to effective use. “The Killing Past”, which opens the book, and the title story, which closes it, are especially successful at highlighting the strange tension of tales whose outcomes are already known to us through history.
The effect depends on uncompromisingly direct prose coupled with equally direct access to characters’ thoughts and feelings, so that we ourselves are never foreign to these tales of foreignness. This can have its drawbacks, though: when the author simply reports a character’s emotional state and moves on, the reader is prevented from doing the often satisfying emotional maths a more oblique approach might encourage. A coolness sometimes threatens to settle across the pages – but Henighan’s underlying humanity, his interest in the average person in often less than average circumstances, almost always heats things up again.
October 5, 2008
I received A Grave in the Air by Stephen Henighan from Mini Book Expo for Bloggers, and it took a long time to get to my mailbox from Thistledown Press in Canada. When it finally arrived I was happy to begin reading. I've often loved reading novels and short stories that show how war can impact families, relationships, and societies. Although the short stories often do not provide the reader with in-depth war strategy and in-the-moment events, whether it is World War II or the Bosnian-Serbian conflict of the 1990s, the impact of war is palatable in the lives of the characters Henighan created.
The book of short stories starts off with "The Killing Past," which examines the impact of one woman's story about Bartholomew's ancestor upon her nephew. The obsession it becomes for Bart is phenomenal.
In "Miss Why," Agnieszka is an inquisitive youth growing up in Poland at a time when the nation is moving away from socialism toward more Western ideals. While she struggles to find her place in society, she meets a man with a similar outlook on the Western ideals taking over their society. It was interesting to see how they coped with the transformation of their society, though there really was no resolution in this short story, which left me a bit disappointed.
"Duty Calls" follows Tibor, who is recently divorced, and his relationship with a woman he has not seen in many years and his disillusionment with himself since his divorce. This story is not every uplifting, but it does deal with how a man, who sees himself as an outsider, will act to gain acceptance.
In "Beyond Bliss," which was my favorite of the short stories, Vivian compromises her integrity to get what she wants. To help her friend, Ray, build his publishing house in Canada, she gains the trust of Erich, a controversial author. Vivian, another character who feels like an outsider in Canada because she is British, uses her ambition to find her place in the world.
I also really enjoyed "A Sense of Time," "Freedom Square," and "Nothing Wishes to Be Different" because the show the reader a series of relationships that change between former students at university because of a single event, a relationship between a mother and daughter because of the daughter's summer job, and the relationships between a father and mother and their children when the father makes one fateful and personal decision about his own life.
While this is not one of my favorite short story collections, it does have a great deal going for it. It examines how war in the present and past can have an impact on someone, even if they are not directly involved in a conflict. Some of the characters are quirky and bit out there, but others are carefully nuanced.
The book of short stories starts off with "The Killing Past," which examines the impact of one woman's story about Bartholomew's ancestor upon her nephew. The obsession it becomes for Bart is phenomenal.
In "Miss Why," Agnieszka is an inquisitive youth growing up in Poland at a time when the nation is moving away from socialism toward more Western ideals. While she struggles to find her place in society, she meets a man with a similar outlook on the Western ideals taking over their society. It was interesting to see how they coped with the transformation of their society, though there really was no resolution in this short story, which left me a bit disappointed.
"Duty Calls" follows Tibor, who is recently divorced, and his relationship with a woman he has not seen in many years and his disillusionment with himself since his divorce. This story is not every uplifting, but it does deal with how a man, who sees himself as an outsider, will act to gain acceptance.
In "Beyond Bliss," which was my favorite of the short stories, Vivian compromises her integrity to get what she wants. To help her friend, Ray, build his publishing house in Canada, she gains the trust of Erich, a controversial author. Vivian, another character who feels like an outsider in Canada because she is British, uses her ambition to find her place in the world.
I also really enjoyed "A Sense of Time," "Freedom Square," and "Nothing Wishes to Be Different" because the show the reader a series of relationships that change between former students at university because of a single event, a relationship between a mother and daughter because of the daughter's summer job, and the relationships between a father and mother and their children when the father makes one fateful and personal decision about his own life.
While this is not one of my favorite short story collections, it does have a great deal going for it. It examines how war in the present and past can have an impact on someone, even if they are not directly involved in a conflict. Some of the characters are quirky and bit out there, but others are carefully nuanced.
May 19, 2013
A solid 3.5, actually. The last--and title--story was a five. The first story was a good four. As for the rest, there was a sameness to them - in voice, in plot, in arc. The writing was good in the remaining stories, I just did not connect. But that last story! I wish the entire collection had been of that caliber. I could not put it down.
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