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Gods & Angels
A seventeen-year-old boy visits his estranged mother on Boxing Day in a grey seaside town; a University lecturer falls in with a group of older men who inhabit a very different world while trying to learn how to swim; a detective breaks into his former home to spy on his estranged family; a couple reflect on twenty-five years of marriage under the Northern Lights; and an old man volunteering in a charity shop forms a tender bond with a young single mother.
Bringing together deeply affecting stories exploring masculinity, loneliness, isolation and longing, Gods and Angels is a masterful collection from one of Ireland's finest writer.
Bringing together deeply affecting stories exploring masculinity, loneliness, isolation and longing, Gods and Angels is a masterful collection from one of Ireland's finest writer.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
304 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 9, 2017
Each story is a perfect gem. Very clever without wearing its cleverness on its sleeve.
June 14, 2017
13 stories, mostly in the 20-30 page range. In "Learning to Swim" a university lecturer new to the city falls in with some other middle-aged men at the Health Club. One suspects that the title will have more than a literal meaning. Two-thirds of the way in we're told what by then we already know - "There were so many questions but something - perhaps it was fear - stopped me from asking and it felt as if I had stumbled by chance into a world far beyond mine whose existence was governed by rules and principles of which I had only the most tenuous grasp". Then at the end, when (surprise, surprise) he's thrown into a pool - "And this is how I have come to remember them and everything that happened during those months - finding myself floundering in that strange element of a city, their faces and voices increasingly blurred as if they too were cast adrift in some world that was partly of their own making, but in part of things they didn't fully understand".
The story and characters were interesting enough, but it doesn't quite deliver.
"Boxing Day" has some nice touches and observation. A 17 year-old boy is being driven to his mother by his father. The boy's reluctant to go - he likes living with his father and a new family - 'Why do I need to keep doing this?' I asked, turning off the radio to signal my seriousness. 'Because it's the right thing to do and because when all's said and done she's still your mother.'
Sentences like "I walked to the window. The sea seemed locked into a stupor, slumbering in some forlorn memory of its former motion" ensure we don't forget the mood. Not for the first time, she falls asleep on the couch during his stay. He looks through the old Christmas decorations. She's given him a present of a magnifying glass. He uses it to study her scalp. Later "There was a coldness eddying off a sea that still looked bored by its own motion as it broke lifelessly on the single beach". He steals a photo when his father picks him up (his mother still asleep) because he doesn't plan to return though he's noticed for the first time scars on her wrist. They play "The Very Best of The Smiths" on the way home, a compromise.
"The Kiss" intersplices a Caravaggio episode with some modern life. "Keeping Watch" also uses juxtaposition. A cop on look-out duties ("The mist-raddled morning air clings to my face and crimps the skin so it feels as if I'm wearing a mask") also sneaks into the house of his ex-wife and son. "The Strong Silent Type" features a first-person male shop mannequin - "Then the light goes out and I'm left with nothing but the thin sift of dreams where as always my companion reaches out her hand to meet mine and when we embrace I feel the flow of her warmth press against me and in that sudden flush our mouths blossom with words". "The Bloggers" starts with "The divorce didn't go well, as might have been expected from how badly the marriage went". It has entertaining parts within a predictable narrative arc. "Skype" is uneventful, set on a Scottish/Scandinavian fishing island where the children keep leaving - "The desire to share the little they have been given by children children ensures the word Skype has become as common as references to the weather in the islanders' exchanges". "Heatwave" is amusing; an avalanche of little failures.
In "Man Overboard" some lads ("stranded in the wrong side of forty" - one of them, Douggie, depressed) leave their wives for an angling weekend. They're not sure whether they should have invited Douggie, though they're nice to him. Duggie jumps off a boat. Suicide? No, he swims to an island - 'I wanted to know what the water felt like. Wanted to be on the island,' Douggie said). "Gecko" features a couple married for 25 years, childless. For their silver wedding anniversary they go on an arctic holiday with no guarantee of seeing the Northern Lights. They're still in love "It was too cold to linger long and when they went inside their travel tiredness encouraged them to bed. They both knew they should made love and so they helped each other into the needed responses and afterwards in the silence they listened briefly to the fire's final surrender before they too fell asleep.". 'We've always been sensible,' she said but it wasn't clear if she meant it as a compliment or a criticism.
"Old Fool" (the longest story but not the best) is about a widowered charity shop volunteer who tries to help a young mother customer, Georgie. They exchange life stories. He does odd jobs for her - "That was how we became part of each other's lives and like the shop you don't need to be an expert to grasp the need it fulfilled for me although below the surface there were occasions when I was conscious of other complications of feeling". They sleep together, once, after which he realises he's gone too far. He notices she's wearing a bracelet that he'd bought for his wife in Barcelona. He'd donated it, and Georgie had stolen it from the shop.
"Crossing the river" has Charon as its first-person narrator. There's competition from "the young ones with their customised and pimped carriers, all glittering with technology and toys, their sat navs and their entertainment centres". He rows illegal immigrants over. His last passenger of the day is his slightly demented mother.
I feel for the people in these stories despite the hint of heart-string-pulling.
The story and characters were interesting enough, but it doesn't quite deliver.
"Boxing Day" has some nice touches and observation. A 17 year-old boy is being driven to his mother by his father. The boy's reluctant to go - he likes living with his father and a new family - 'Why do I need to keep doing this?' I asked, turning off the radio to signal my seriousness. 'Because it's the right thing to do and because when all's said and done she's still your mother.'
Sentences like "I walked to the window. The sea seemed locked into a stupor, slumbering in some forlorn memory of its former motion" ensure we don't forget the mood. Not for the first time, she falls asleep on the couch during his stay. He looks through the old Christmas decorations. She's given him a present of a magnifying glass. He uses it to study her scalp. Later "There was a coldness eddying off a sea that still looked bored by its own motion as it broke lifelessly on the single beach". He steals a photo when his father picks him up (his mother still asleep) because he doesn't plan to return though he's noticed for the first time scars on her wrist. They play "The Very Best of The Smiths" on the way home, a compromise.
"The Kiss" intersplices a Caravaggio episode with some modern life. "Keeping Watch" also uses juxtaposition. A cop on look-out duties ("The mist-raddled morning air clings to my face and crimps the skin so it feels as if I'm wearing a mask") also sneaks into the house of his ex-wife and son. "The Strong Silent Type" features a first-person male shop mannequin - "Then the light goes out and I'm left with nothing but the thin sift of dreams where as always my companion reaches out her hand to meet mine and when we embrace I feel the flow of her warmth press against me and in that sudden flush our mouths blossom with words". "The Bloggers" starts with "The divorce didn't go well, as might have been expected from how badly the marriage went". It has entertaining parts within a predictable narrative arc. "Skype" is uneventful, set on a Scottish/Scandinavian fishing island where the children keep leaving - "The desire to share the little they have been given by children children ensures the word Skype has become as common as references to the weather in the islanders' exchanges". "Heatwave" is amusing; an avalanche of little failures.
In "Man Overboard" some lads ("stranded in the wrong side of forty" - one of them, Douggie, depressed) leave their wives for an angling weekend. They're not sure whether they should have invited Douggie, though they're nice to him. Duggie jumps off a boat. Suicide? No, he swims to an island - 'I wanted to know what the water felt like. Wanted to be on the island,' Douggie said). "Gecko" features a couple married for 25 years, childless. For their silver wedding anniversary they go on an arctic holiday with no guarantee of seeing the Northern Lights. They're still in love "It was too cold to linger long and when they went inside their travel tiredness encouraged them to bed. They both knew they should made love and so they helped each other into the needed responses and afterwards in the silence they listened briefly to the fire's final surrender before they too fell asleep.". 'We've always been sensible,' she said but it wasn't clear if she meant it as a compliment or a criticism.
"Old Fool" (the longest story but not the best) is about a widowered charity shop volunteer who tries to help a young mother customer, Georgie. They exchange life stories. He does odd jobs for her - "That was how we became part of each other's lives and like the shop you don't need to be an expert to grasp the need it fulfilled for me although below the surface there were occasions when I was conscious of other complications of feeling". They sleep together, once, after which he realises he's gone too far. He notices she's wearing a bracelet that he'd bought for his wife in Barcelona. He'd donated it, and Georgie had stolen it from the shop.
"Crossing the river" has Charon as its first-person narrator. There's competition from "the young ones with their customised and pimped carriers, all glittering with technology and toys, their sat navs and their entertainment centres". He rows illegal immigrants over. His last passenger of the day is his slightly demented mother.
I feel for the people in these stories despite the hint of heart-string-pulling.
May 4, 2017
He looks at himself one final time in the glass, sees the tint of white in his hair, then blinks his image away and tries to slash light into the darkness.
"Slashing light into the darkness" is very much the purpose of this book, it seems.
Gods & Angels is a collection of short stories by David Parks, and as such it is hard to give an overview of what exactly it's all about, but if there is one overriding theme it would probably be "relationships between men and other stuff in the universe" - men and women, of course; men and other men; boys and their mothers; science teachers and the stars. Each story isolates a different type of relationship and analyses it very neatly and very cleverly within an approximate span of 20 pages. The subjects dealt with are complicated things, difficult to discuss, tenants of some dark and mysterious district of the human condition, but Park takes it upon himself to slash as much light into all of them as he can.
He doesn't always succeed, but it's clear that he tries his best.
About half of the stories are very poignant, quite unforgettable things, and in general the stories that make up this half are the quirkier ones, the ones boasting unique ideas. Stories like "Learning to Swim", "Gecko", "Old Fool" and, most especially, "Crossing the River", which takes a genius angle on the intersection of work life, personal life and certain death. In these stories Park exhibits his excellence at pinpointing with great accuracy the tiniest emotions, the quietest thoughts, the most real and touching moments that make up our every imperfect day.
But there is another half. The rest of the stories in this collection are boring, quite simply. They don't exactly grip you in the instant of reading them and they fade from the mind fairly quickly when you've put the book down. Nothing happens that we haven't read a thousand times before, in terms of action or emotion, and the "Mr Writer" persona that Park adopts doesn't help - a literary voice that practically screams "I am a scholarly genius with a massive vocabulary", and smothers the real hard-hitting stuff of the stories in obscure showy-off passages better suited to the poorer parts of poetry. Furthermore - and this particularly bothered me - Park appears to have absolutely no idea of what a comma is. One might think this is a small nitpicking point, but when one reads the book it simply can't be missed - sentences go on and on and on and in so jumping from clause to lengthy clause in unabashed abuse of rules of grammar that have long been in place for a reason achieve an unquestionable bafflement on the part of the poor reader who in the absence of a Sherlockian memory ultimately loses track of what the whole sentence ever meant in the first place. This sort of thing should have been quashed at the editor's office, so it's not entirely Parks' fault, but the fact remains - this book is seriously hard to read sometimes, and when your book is work for the reader then the reader is unlikely to look favourably upon it. Here is the proof.
This book is disappointing. Read it, yes, because there is a good bit of very impressive character work here, but since half the stories are worth reading, I would suggest getting it at half the price, and spending the other half of the price on a fine set of pens that can be used to insert appropriate commas as you read.
"Slashing light into the darkness" is very much the purpose of this book, it seems.
Gods & Angels is a collection of short stories by David Parks, and as such it is hard to give an overview of what exactly it's all about, but if there is one overriding theme it would probably be "relationships between men and other stuff in the universe" - men and women, of course; men and other men; boys and their mothers; science teachers and the stars. Each story isolates a different type of relationship and analyses it very neatly and very cleverly within an approximate span of 20 pages. The subjects dealt with are complicated things, difficult to discuss, tenants of some dark and mysterious district of the human condition, but Park takes it upon himself to slash as much light into all of them as he can.
He doesn't always succeed, but it's clear that he tries his best.
About half of the stories are very poignant, quite unforgettable things, and in general the stories that make up this half are the quirkier ones, the ones boasting unique ideas. Stories like "Learning to Swim", "Gecko", "Old Fool" and, most especially, "Crossing the River", which takes a genius angle on the intersection of work life, personal life and certain death. In these stories Park exhibits his excellence at pinpointing with great accuracy the tiniest emotions, the quietest thoughts, the most real and touching moments that make up our every imperfect day.
But there is another half. The rest of the stories in this collection are boring, quite simply. They don't exactly grip you in the instant of reading them and they fade from the mind fairly quickly when you've put the book down. Nothing happens that we haven't read a thousand times before, in terms of action or emotion, and the "Mr Writer" persona that Park adopts doesn't help - a literary voice that practically screams "I am a scholarly genius with a massive vocabulary", and smothers the real hard-hitting stuff of the stories in obscure showy-off passages better suited to the poorer parts of poetry. Furthermore - and this particularly bothered me - Park appears to have absolutely no idea of what a comma is. One might think this is a small nitpicking point, but when one reads the book it simply can't be missed - sentences go on and on and on and in so jumping from clause to lengthy clause in unabashed abuse of rules of grammar that have long been in place for a reason achieve an unquestionable bafflement on the part of the poor reader who in the absence of a Sherlockian memory ultimately loses track of what the whole sentence ever meant in the first place. This sort of thing should have been quashed at the editor's office, so it's not entirely Parks' fault, but the fact remains - this book is seriously hard to read sometimes, and when your book is work for the reader then the reader is unlikely to look favourably upon it. Here is the proof.
This book is disappointing. Read it, yes, because there is a good bit of very impressive character work here, but since half the stories are worth reading, I would suggest getting it at half the price, and spending the other half of the price on a fine set of pens that can be used to insert appropriate commas as you read.
October 17, 2016
David Park says he wanted this book of short stories to be about men, some may be Gods, some Angels but most don't measure up. Most of these stories are sad and while often well written the men simply aren't likeable. Learning to swim was intriguing and thought provoking but the Old Fool didn't quite ring true. These short stories were not for me but I do look forward to his next novel.
July 15, 2016
Every chapter is a complete short story. Each story is about relationships. Beautifully written with an excellent understanding of the human condition. I really enjoyed the book.
November 10, 2016
The first of this set of short stories ‘Learning to Swim’ is an interesting study of the interaction of outsiders with our Northern Irish character. After that, I felt my interest waning. This was puzzling, as I always enjoy this writer’s work.
I was lucky enough to attend a talk given by David Park, and wished I had heard him explain some of the background to the stories before I had read them.
This collection is written from an exclusively male perspective, with an attempt to redress the balance after Park’s previous novel, narrated by the wives of three poets.
The men in the stories sometimes aspire to be gods, but often fall. David Park’s experimentation with sense of place is also in evidence, perhaps confusing without any sense of time or location as in ‘The Painted Cave’.
The only non- fictional male in the collection is Carravaggio in ‘The kiss’. I wonder why Carravaggio?
I was lucky enough to attend a talk given by David Park, and wished I had heard him explain some of the background to the stories before I had read them.
This collection is written from an exclusively male perspective, with an attempt to redress the balance after Park’s previous novel, narrated by the wives of three poets.
The men in the stories sometimes aspire to be gods, but often fall. David Park’s experimentation with sense of place is also in evidence, perhaps confusing without any sense of time or location as in ‘The Painted Cave’.
The only non- fictional male in the collection is Carravaggio in ‘The kiss’. I wonder why Carravaggio?
February 17, 2019
I don't now why I have never heard of David Park until I found him by accident in the library last year. This collection of short stories has some real gems and surprises. If you haven't tried his writing you really should. Heath warning - the last story nearly made me cry.
December 12, 2016
One of my favourite modern authors. Superb at wrapping you in the story and his characterisation is flawless. Wonderful commentator on the human condition and subtle in his delivery. Hard to beat.
June 8, 2018
Very good. And I’m not a fan of short stories.
Each story stood on its own. And stays with you.
The only story I didn’t like, and didn’t finish, was the third of the 13 stories, called The Kiss.
Each story stood on its own. And stays with you.
The only story I didn’t like, and didn’t finish, was the third of the 13 stories, called The Kiss.
December 26, 2018
Wonderful collection of 13 short stories by this amazing author, whose prose always demonstrates his uncanny ability to clearly observe and depict life and people - 9/10.
March 9, 2017
The stories in Gods & Angels, by David Park, could each be considered a character study presented in story form as much as simply being a story (as in narrative-driven).
The snippets of life around which these character studies are wound highlight who or what each man wants to consider himself to be. These stories are intentionally about men and the disconnect between how they see themselves and how they really are. This disconnect is disturbingly clear in "Keeping Watch" but is present to some degree in every story.
One aspect of the stories that particularly appealed to me was the tension I experienced while reading each one. Our tendency is to think ahead as we read, consider what might happen. These characters were less than light-hearted and the stories tended toward dark, so my mind kept anticipating some horrific event which, for the most part, never came. The idea that the same thinking which leads these characters to do things relatively harmless and mundane acts can be the same thoughts that can lead another person to do something horrible.
I would highly recommend this book to any fans of the short story and anyone who enjoys character-driven fiction. The scenes and characters will stay with you well after finishing each story.
Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
The snippets of life around which these character studies are wound highlight who or what each man wants to consider himself to be. These stories are intentionally about men and the disconnect between how they see themselves and how they really are. This disconnect is disturbingly clear in "Keeping Watch" but is present to some degree in every story.
One aspect of the stories that particularly appealed to me was the tension I experienced while reading each one. Our tendency is to think ahead as we read, consider what might happen. These characters were less than light-hearted and the stories tended toward dark, so my mind kept anticipating some horrific event which, for the most part, never came. The idea that the same thinking which leads these characters to do things relatively harmless and mundane acts can be the same thoughts that can lead another person to do something horrible.
I would highly recommend this book to any fans of the short story and anyone who enjoys character-driven fiction. The scenes and characters will stay with you well after finishing each story.
Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
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