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Dark Neighbourhood
In her brilliantly inventive debut collection, Vanessa Onwuemezi takes readers on a surreal and haunting journey through a landscape on the edge of time. At the border with another world, a line of people wait for the gates to open; on the floor of a lonely room, a Born Winner runs through his life's achievements and losses; in a suburban garden, a man witnesses a murder that pushes him out into the community. Struggling to realize the human ideals of love and freedom, the characters of Dark Neighborhood roam instead the depths of alienation, loss and shame. With a detached eye and hallucinatory vision, they observe their own worlds as the line between dream and reality dissolves and they themselves begin to fragment. Electrifying and heady, and written with a masterful lyrical precision, Dark Neighborhood heralds the arrival of a strikingly original new voice in fiction.
139 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2021
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September 19, 2023
Dark Neighbourhood is the debut fiction collection from poet Vanessa Onwuemezi. Stylistically, this blurs the boundary between fiction and poetry, with stories told in paragraphs and lines that often scan as poetry. Some of the stories were excellent: The Growing State, Bright Spaces, and Green Afternoon were personal favorites. The opening and closing stories were also good and echoed each other in interesting ways. One of my favorite things about the collection is Onwuemezi’s willingness to experiment. Some experiments worked better than others, but seeing that range made this book feel more intimate. Hopefully we see more fiction from Onwuemezi.
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March 27, 2022Update: Shortlisted for 2022 Republic Of Consciousness prize for Small Presses
I read two stories from the collection and I decided the book is not for me. The writing is too experimental in form, it takes too much concentration to try to understand the message the writer is trying to convey. It felt like some contemporary paintings which are interesting to look at but hard to make sense of. I think the writer is talented and readers who like short stories and experimental fiction should give it a try.
I read two stories from the collection and I decided the book is not for me. The writing is too experimental in form, it takes too much concentration to try to understand the message the writer is trying to convey. It felt like some contemporary paintings which are interesting to look at but hard to make sense of. I think the writer is talented and readers who like short stories and experimental fiction should give it a try.
April 17, 2022
An unique reading experience, full of marginalized people like the dying and cleaners getting a voice. Very interesting experiments, but for me not all succesful
We are all alike in this strangeness.
I don't think I can say it better than Lady Gaga:
https://youtu.be/vBk0P27QGmc
Dark Neighbourhood is a special book, definitely an experience.
As with many experiments not everything is always successful, thoughts per story below:
Dark Neighborhood
Light upon light is darkness.
I am unsure what I read, feels like a surreal, dreamlike landscape, a kind of limbo before a mysterious black gate, with an unnamed narrator telling us the garbled insight that stuff won’t save or insulate.
Cuba
Again quite unsure what I read, although the main character, called Cuba, cleaning rooms in hotel is a given. I have low key indicators that she killed her baby and there is something about labor action.
Heartbreak at the Super 8
Most traditional tale yet, about a blue collar worker in Reno developing an obsession for Ursula, a blond who saves him and turns out to be a prostitute
The growing state
You will be missed, but not in any of the important ways.
A man on a drugs overdose remembers his life, while being guided by a cleaner.
Bright spaces
month on month your presence became an absence.
Someone reminiscing on the death of a brother, apparently by drugs. First I though this story was told by a cat, but I should just be really careful in reading.
Green afternoon
Very dreamlike, on knife violence, with baby’s gnawing at the narrator, ram headed people and scenes that reminded me of Anna Kavan her dream logic in Ice.
At the heart of things
We found no way of being without him.
Very short but still I found it very hard to concentrate on this undersea story
We are all alike in this strangeness.
I don't think I can say it better than Lady Gaga:
https://youtu.be/vBk0P27QGmc
Dark Neighbourhood is a special book, definitely an experience.
As with many experiments not everything is always successful, thoughts per story below:
Dark Neighborhood
Light upon light is darkness.
I am unsure what I read, feels like a surreal, dreamlike landscape, a kind of limbo before a mysterious black gate, with an unnamed narrator telling us the garbled insight that stuff won’t save or insulate.
Cuba
Again quite unsure what I read, although the main character, called Cuba, cleaning rooms in hotel is a given. I have low key indicators that she killed her baby and there is something about labor action.
Heartbreak at the Super 8
Most traditional tale yet, about a blue collar worker in Reno developing an obsession for Ursula, a blond who saves him and turns out to be a prostitute
The growing state
You will be missed, but not in any of the important ways.
A man on a drugs overdose remembers his life, while being guided by a cleaner.
Bright spaces
month on month your presence became an absence.
Someone reminiscing on the death of a brother, apparently by drugs. First I though this story was told by a cat, but I should just be really careful in reading.
Green afternoon
Very dreamlike, on knife violence, with baby’s gnawing at the narrator, ram headed people and scenes that reminded me of Anna Kavan her dream logic in Ice.
At the heart of things
We found no way of being without him.
Very short but still I found it very hard to concentrate on this undersea story
September 15, 2022
Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The story “Green Afternoon” now shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award
there is no meaning. Hanging a picture on the wall I give a little too much force to my thumb skin breaks under pressure an orb of blood red red to dark red to dry red to skin to iron to rust to heat to sweat to yesterdays as we move, we move. Tuesday. Going into the city with the rest of them sliding down the greased pole of means become ends. Let me tell you. I slipped and travelled against the sharp grain of escalator, one flight of metal before I hit flat floor and crack, to the back of my head. I cried like a child oh I oh I said me am in pain
From ‘The Heart of Things’, winner of the White Review Short Story Prize 2019 and the closing story in Vanessa Onwuemezi‘s debut collection, Dark Neighbourhood.
As a reader, I had not properly appreciated what could be done with the short-story form until I had the privilege of judging the 2018 Republic of Consciouness Prize which attracted writing from the UK’s ground-breaking small press scene. The entries and our long- and short-lists featured some wonderful example of innovative uses of the form, best encapsulated in the winner, Eley Williams’s Attrib. and other stories as well as another shortlisted book, David Hayden’s Darker with the Lights On.
So it was a delight to read this collection, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, twice winner of the RofC Prize, which is both highly inventive and distinct in its own right, but which the author has also acknowledged was directly inspired by Attrib, particularly the innovative use of punctuation and typography evident from the opening quote above.
The comment about ‘permission’ to do something above, reflects that made by another exciting contemporary writer who has stretched the boundaries of the form, Irenosen Okojie, who has talked (https://www.shortfictionjournal.co.uk...) about how she “actively sought permission, in a way, from other writers who were also pushing the boundaries of what they did” and Onwuemezi has also described how she took permission from Woolf’s Orlando, from Kafka and from Cortàzar, whose story of Parisians trapped in a nightmarish traffic-jam, The Southern Thruway (https://latinamericanshortstories.fil...) provides the closing words to the title story of this collection.
Her personal anthology of short-stories, which includes alongside the aforementioned Kafka, Cortàzar and Eley Williams, Denis Johnson, Borges and Calvino can be found here: https://apersonalanthology.com/catego...
When a writer pushes boundaries like this, not all of stories are going to work for all readers, and there were some where I struggled. But when it succeeded for me it did so impressively, my personal highlights being the title story, set in a dystopian purgatory, and Green Afternoon, whose narrator’s exploration of the identity of a murdered boy, who staggered, dying, into his garden, leads him into a different side of society.
A striking collection and a strong contender (if entered) for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
It’s strength has also been recognised by the aforementioned David Hayden in his review in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Interview sources:
https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/int...
http://mironline.org/vanessa-onwuemez...
The story “Green Afternoon” now shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award
there is no meaning. Hanging a picture on the wall I give a little too much force to my thumb skin breaks under pressure an orb of blood red red to dark red to dry red to skin to iron to rust to heat to sweat to yesterdays as we move, we move. Tuesday. Going into the city with the rest of them sliding down the greased pole of means become ends. Let me tell you. I slipped and travelled against the sharp grain of escalator, one flight of metal before I hit flat floor and crack, to the back of my head. I cried like a child oh I oh I said me am in pain
From ‘The Heart of Things’, winner of the White Review Short Story Prize 2019 and the closing story in Vanessa Onwuemezi‘s debut collection, Dark Neighbourhood.
As a reader, I had not properly appreciated what could be done with the short-story form until I had the privilege of judging the 2018 Republic of Consciouness Prize which attracted writing from the UK’s ground-breaking small press scene. The entries and our long- and short-lists featured some wonderful example of innovative uses of the form, best encapsulated in the winner, Eley Williams’s Attrib. and other stories as well as another shortlisted book, David Hayden’s Darker with the Lights On.
So it was a delight to read this collection, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, twice winner of the RofC Prize, which is both highly inventive and distinct in its own right, but which the author has also acknowledged was directly inspired by Attrib, particularly the innovative use of punctuation and typography evident from the opening quote above.
I’d read Eley Willliams’ Attrib. and other stories. My story ‘Heartbreak in the Super 8’ is very directly inspired by her: the typography in that is more loose, more stylised. It was from there I fell into my own thing.
Initially I was trying out the gaps – I wanted a pause that was longer than a normal comma. The gaps seemed the best way of getting the rhythm I wanted to achieve. Initially I was throwing them in and then, after a few stories, I thought to myself, is this necessary? What are they doing? And I experimented with using commas again because, as we said, I hadn’t yet given myself permission. But now commas looked messy and distracting so I decided to keep using the gaps.
From an aural perspective they do mete out the rhythm of the text. In places I want a word to appear on its own, but I also want a pause. It’s a rhythmic thing. I saw a production of A View from the Bridge where the actors left an inordinate amount of time between speaking, just a second longer than is natural. So it sounded very unnatural – also very exciting and effective – about breaking up dialogue in that way: that had a really big effect on how I see the rhythm of a text.
The comment about ‘permission’ to do something above, reflects that made by another exciting contemporary writer who has stretched the boundaries of the form, Irenosen Okojie, who has talked (https://www.shortfictionjournal.co.uk...) about how she “actively sought permission, in a way, from other writers who were also pushing the boundaries of what they did” and Onwuemezi has also described how she took permission from Woolf’s Orlando, from Kafka and from Cortàzar, whose story of Parisians trapped in a nightmarish traffic-jam, The Southern Thruway (https://latinamericanshortstories.fil...) provides the closing words to the title story of this collection.
Before this, there was a point when I wrote more conventionally. I didn’t know I was waiting for someone to tell me I could do this and now I try to consciously recognise when I’m holding myself back, and allow myself to experiment. The worst that can happen is that someone says they don’t understand it.
Her personal anthology of short-stories, which includes alongside the aforementioned Kafka, Cortàzar and Eley Williams, Denis Johnson, Borges and Calvino can be found here: https://apersonalanthology.com/catego...
When a writer pushes boundaries like this, not all of stories are going to work for all readers, and there were some where I struggled. But when it succeeded for me it did so impressively, my personal highlights being the title story, set in a dystopian purgatory, and Green Afternoon, whose narrator’s exploration of the identity of a murdered boy, who staggered, dying, into his garden, leads him into a different side of society.
A striking collection and a strong contender (if entered) for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
It’s strength has also been recognised by the aforementioned David Hayden in his review in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Interview sources:
https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/int...
http://mironline.org/vanessa-onwuemez...
September 15, 2022
For me the best story in the collection has now been shortlisted for the BBC short story award.
The full collection was Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This is a debut collection of short stories although the author (a poet and writer) has already won the prestigious White Review Short Story Prize and a number of the stories have already been published there or in Granta (links presented below).
The book reminded me of two books which were shortlisted for the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize – a year I was one of the judges and both collections whose inclusion on the shortlist I strongly championed; David Hayden’s “Darker with the Lights On” for what the author of that collection described as his technique of “defamiliarisation” to create a text which gains its resonance precisely by losing obvious reference points and Eley Williams “Attrib.” for her innovative use of typography, spacing and language.
And interestingly the book is blurbed by Williams (who the author has specifically referenced as an inspiration) and was reviewed very strongly in The Guardian by Hayden (who is far more eloquent about the book than I can be here - https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...).
Of Hayden’s own collection my 2017-18 review says “Many of the stories can at first read seem disorienting lacking an obvious and familiar anchor around which to base one's comprehension and on a first read I preferred the stories where I felt that I understood Hayden’s theme or concept for the story, although often even these stories veer off into a surreal ending.”. And so I was intrigued both to experience something of the same phenomenon here and to see in Hayden’s review of this book this comment: “The disruptive style works to convey the textures and deep resonances of harsh experience: to explore the necessity and difficulty of memory, and the challenges of knowing ourselves and others in the midst of life. At its best, this is prose that courses with energy, confident in its inventiveness. The risk in not relying on borrowed formulas and striking out into a world of new phrases is that the reader might lose their hold on sense and coherence, but Onwuemezi’s meanings are rooted firmly in her gifts of attention, rhythm, colour and shape.”
One thing I particularly appreciated in this book was how the stories play with this very sense of moving away from conventional communication and phrases in order to get a real handle on what is happening. For example when in the striking titular opening story (see below) a character reverts, unusually, to a boring cliché of “Long time no see”, the other character immediately comments “Ah some words are in the right order”. In the strongest story “Green Afternoon” (again see below) the narrator trying to make sense of life (and in particular a death) ends up shuffling letters around “changing one letter at a time moved towards the wanted word. And talked out loud to help me through”
I have added some other relevant quotes under each story.
“Dark Neighbourhood” is set in a form of waiting room for a better life – the narrator, who runs a form of swap shop and sees her closest friend die (death and mourning are recurring themes) only realises at the end that her waiting for was only ever really self-sanctioned
“Cuba” (https://granta.com/cuba-vanessa-onwue...) and “Heartbreak at the Super 8” I found the weaker stories – I think due to their setting. I know the author’s interest in Afro-Cuban religions was key to her researches for the novel which may justify the first (a tale of hotel maids, unionisation and a lost baby) but the second seemed to American road-trip for my tastes.
“The Growing State” had particular resonances for me – a successful businesman “The Winner” is seemingly dying in his office, contacted in turn by his third wife and her two predecessors, and his children – all critical of his concentration on business ahead of his family, with his interlocutor an office cleaner who is possibly there to clean up his body and soul.
One paragraph in particular reminded me of my own conversations with my EA albeit I hope I achieve a slightly better work-life balance
“Bright Spaces” (https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...) was I thought a real highlight – a very moving story of woman (and her daughter) reflecting on the untimely death of her possibly mentally troubled brother
“Green Afternoon” was I thought the best book of the entire collection – a man witnesses finds a young man dying of a stab wound in his garden and enters a darker side of London in his quest to find out more about the man and what lead to his death (with some troubling implications for himself at the end)
“At the Heart of Things” (https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...) – the closing story and her White Review winner is ostensibly about a woman who trips on an escalator on her commute and recuperating at home enters an underwater land where she encounters her family including her estranged sister and late father.
Overall an innovative and very promising collection – one which, like many of the best experimental literature causes the reader to re-examine our assumptions about language and life.
The full collection was Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This is a debut collection of short stories although the author (a poet and writer) has already won the prestigious White Review Short Story Prize and a number of the stories have already been published there or in Granta (links presented below).
The book reminded me of two books which were shortlisted for the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize – a year I was one of the judges and both collections whose inclusion on the shortlist I strongly championed; David Hayden’s “Darker with the Lights On” for what the author of that collection described as his technique of “defamiliarisation” to create a text which gains its resonance precisely by losing obvious reference points and Eley Williams “Attrib.” for her innovative use of typography, spacing and language.
And interestingly the book is blurbed by Williams (who the author has specifically referenced as an inspiration) and was reviewed very strongly in The Guardian by Hayden (who is far more eloquent about the book than I can be here - https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...).
Of Hayden’s own collection my 2017-18 review says “Many of the stories can at first read seem disorienting lacking an obvious and familiar anchor around which to base one's comprehension and on a first read I preferred the stories where I felt that I understood Hayden’s theme or concept for the story, although often even these stories veer off into a surreal ending.”. And so I was intrigued both to experience something of the same phenomenon here and to see in Hayden’s review of this book this comment: “The disruptive style works to convey the textures and deep resonances of harsh experience: to explore the necessity and difficulty of memory, and the challenges of knowing ourselves and others in the midst of life. At its best, this is prose that courses with energy, confident in its inventiveness. The risk in not relying on borrowed formulas and striking out into a world of new phrases is that the reader might lose their hold on sense and coherence, but Onwuemezi’s meanings are rooted firmly in her gifts of attention, rhythm, colour and shape.”
One thing I particularly appreciated in this book was how the stories play with this very sense of moving away from conventional communication and phrases in order to get a real handle on what is happening. For example when in the striking titular opening story (see below) a character reverts, unusually, to a boring cliché of “Long time no see”, the other character immediately comments “Ah some words are in the right order”. In the strongest story “Green Afternoon” (again see below) the narrator trying to make sense of life (and in particular a death) ends up shuffling letters around “changing one letter at a time moved towards the wanted word. And talked out loud to help me through”
I have added some other relevant quotes under each story.
“Dark Neighbourhood” is set in a form of waiting room for a better life – the narrator, who runs a form of swap shop and sees her closest friend die (death and mourning are recurring themes) only realises at the end that her waiting for was only ever really self-sanctioned
‘Some kind of ridiculous,’ Stevi says, and looks around like casting judgement on all but unseen fragments of dust. Those statements, piped out at regular intervals, make nonsense for our ears, fatherly condescension. A kind of love, perhaps, perhaps that’s it, Stevi is here, grazed, looking rough and in love after all. ‘By the time those words reach my patch, they’ll be mixed up, and some words swapped out for other words. The statement will make another sense, or another nonsense by then,’ he says.
“Cuba” (https://granta.com/cuba-vanessa-onwue...) and “Heartbreak at the Super 8” I found the weaker stories – I think due to their setting. I know the author’s interest in Afro-Cuban religions was key to her researches for the novel which may justify the first (a tale of hotel maids, unionisation and a lost baby) but the second seemed to American road-trip for my tastes.
“The Growing State” had particular resonances for me – a successful businesman “The Winner” is seemingly dying in his office, contacted in turn by his third wife and her two predecessors, and his children – all critical of his concentration on business ahead of his family, with his interlocutor an office cleaner who is possibly there to clean up his body and soul.
One paragraph in particular reminded me of my own conversations with my EA albeit I hope I achieve a slightly better work-life balance
Ottessa runs through the week: ‘You don’t want to be disturbed, I know, but a reminder.’ She’s standing up, voice full and assertive. ‘Morning meeting tomorrow, 9 a.m., over at Tullow’s offices, good luck, I’ve emailed you the briefing notes, car booked for 8.40 car back to the office, let me know, car home car booked afternoon lunch pre-ordered then we have them coming in, I know, there was no other day table across the road booked for dinner, breakfast, I thought that you would be hungry, let me know, safe trip, your flight for Wednesday booked for 9 p.m. as you asked need your sign-off on those expenses at some point and those and those, lunch meeting with the lawyers when you’re back please let me know … good luck, safe trip, next time.’
“Bright Spaces” (https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...) was I thought a real highlight – a very moving story of woman (and her daughter) reflecting on the untimely death of her possibly mentally troubled brother
I try to say something true. I don’t have the vocabulary to say it. ‘I am the way, the truth,’ we would say sitting in rows can you hear it? A clash of memories, the only truth I can get at. And to love each memory without falling apart, to love is the hardest thing. My voice rebounds. Memory slips and is split, I disappear inside and everything else is lost because my brother, the good man is dead.
“Green Afternoon” was I thought the best book of the entire collection – a man witnesses finds a young man dying of a stab wound in his garden and enters a darker side of London in his quest to find out more about the man and what lead to his death (with some troubling implications for himself at the end)
I photographed the site, on film, objects and edges blurry. But it wasn’t precision I was after, not the faint details of the ground, but the mood.
They spoke in sentences broken between three mouths, like a ball being batted between them and kept from touching the ground.
“At the Heart of Things” (https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...) – the closing story and her White Review winner is ostensibly about a woman who trips on an escalator on her commute and recuperating at home enters an underwater land where she encounters her family including her estranged sister and late father.
There was nothing to my fingers, no weight, no force on the pads of my feet, no cold draught wafting past the hairs of my skin, no sound, no sight. I couldn’t set my watch to nothing. I waited, couldn’t scream, unaware of mouth or lungs to do so not breathing, not dead, not alive. No fear. Not yet. Eyes wide open into dark and no sense. Unsayable.
Overall an innovative and very promising collection – one which, like many of the best experimental literature causes the reader to re-examine our assumptions about language and life.
March 26, 2022
Shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2022
When the Republic of Consciousness list was announced last week, the only one of the ten I had already read was Sterling Karat Gold, but I am hoping to get hold of all of the others before the shortlist announcement, and I found a copy of this one in my local Waterstones before ordering the rest. It is one of four short story collections on the list.
I found it a little uneven. The opening title story is strikingly original but rather hard work to read - it took me a while to stop getting distracted by the stylistic quirk of using gaps of a short word length in mid sentence and the situation described is speculative and dystopian. The remainder are closer to real world concerns, but not without unnerving moments.
This is a promising collection, and it will be interesting to see what Onwuemezi does next.
When the Republic of Consciousness list was announced last week, the only one of the ten I had already read was Sterling Karat Gold, but I am hoping to get hold of all of the others before the shortlist announcement, and I found a copy of this one in my local Waterstones before ordering the rest. It is one of four short story collections on the list.
I found it a little uneven. The opening title story is strikingly original but rather hard work to read - it took me a while to stop getting distracted by the stylistic quirk of using gaps of a short word length in mid sentence and the situation described is speculative and dystopian. The remainder are closer to real world concerns, but not without unnerving moments.
This is a promising collection, and it will be interesting to see what Onwuemezi does next.
November 11, 2021
114th book of 2021.
2.5. I finished this the other day but have had a hectic weekend so adding now. This is Fitzcarraldo's most recent publication, from October. It is another collection of short stories and funnily enough, as well as in title, I found them almost reminiscent of Clemens Meyer's Dark Satellites. The prose is abstract, the stories are strange; I preferred Meyer's collection without a doubt but there is something exciting about this, knowing it is Onwuemezi's debut. It has more bravery than most debuts. As well as the strange ethereal language, Onwuemezi also plays with space in this collection: there are long Tab-spaces where things are deliberately left unsaid and we are left to either infer what comes in those white spaces or just not to know. Sometimes the stories drop into a sort of free poetry form too, so there's a lot going on. The writing isn't always clear and it isn't always moving but there are some realised moments throughout, if not entire stories that touched me. I corresponded with someone from Fitzcarraldo briefly over email as my copy of this never arrived so they had to send a replacement and the woman I was talking to said it was one of her favourites. Niche taste, but I always appreciate niche tastes when it comes to literature.
2.5. I finished this the other day but have had a hectic weekend so adding now. This is Fitzcarraldo's most recent publication, from October. It is another collection of short stories and funnily enough, as well as in title, I found them almost reminiscent of Clemens Meyer's Dark Satellites. The prose is abstract, the stories are strange; I preferred Meyer's collection without a doubt but there is something exciting about this, knowing it is Onwuemezi's debut. It has more bravery than most debuts. As well as the strange ethereal language, Onwuemezi also plays with space in this collection: there are long Tab-spaces where things are deliberately left unsaid and we are left to either infer what comes in those white spaces or just not to know. Sometimes the stories drop into a sort of free poetry form too, so there's a lot going on. The writing isn't always clear and it isn't always moving but there are some realised moments throughout, if not entire stories that touched me. I corresponded with someone from Fitzcarraldo briefly over email as my copy of this never arrived so they had to send a replacement and the woman I was talking to said it was one of her favourites. Niche taste, but I always appreciate niche tastes when it comes to literature.
November 8, 2021
This wasn't my cup of tea at all. All style, little substance. Take this passage, from the title story:
a graze, or bite infected
blood, clouds under skin
and breathes out ----- the man breathes
once
again ----- breathes out
and down
nose to knees and hands
pray each side of a head
broken into halves.
'Stevi, are you gonna talk?' I say.
'Leaves talk, rocks, tree stumps, the burning
fires ----- talk.' He scratches out that nasty heel.
If you enjoy that kind of writing, then I encourage you to pick this one up. I, however, do not. I like my prose written like prose, thank you very much. All these multi-space gaps (which I've indicated with dashes) that Onwuemezi inserts between words throughout all seven stories included in this collection made the prose feel stilted, pretentious.
This whole collection felt like a particularly overwrought production of a play put on by the self-important occupants of a small, pretentious town who revere the material far too much.
At some point, you just want to start launching tomatoes.
a graze, or bite infected
blood, clouds under skin
and breathes out ----- the man breathes
once
again ----- breathes out
and down
nose to knees and hands
pray each side of a head
broken into halves.
'Stevi, are you gonna talk?' I say.
'Leaves talk, rocks, tree stumps, the burning
fires ----- talk.' He scratches out that nasty heel.
If you enjoy that kind of writing, then I encourage you to pick this one up. I, however, do not. I like my prose written like prose, thank you very much. All these multi-space gaps (which I've indicated with dashes) that Onwuemezi inserts between words throughout all seven stories included in this collection made the prose feel stilted, pretentious.
This whole collection felt like a particularly overwrought production of a play put on by the self-important occupants of a small, pretentious town who revere the material far too much.
At some point, you just want to start launching tomatoes.
abandoned-speed-dating
October 25, 2021This is au revoir more than adieu. The two stories I read were both good, actually. The writing is good. But it's hard work, and I look at the book and dislike the thought of picking it up again and there are just so many things to read....
October 18, 2021
The author, Vanessa Onwuemezi, is also a poet. When she writes she says her first thought is about rhythm (https://www.ft.com/content/0eee9e21-f...). This combination of poetic background and a search primarily for rhythm makes for sometimes dizzying prose. I read this collection of short stories not always entirely clear about what was actually happening but, at the same time, not worrying about not knowing because the writing makes for compelling reading. There’s a poetry and grittiness about the writing that often reminded me of Denis Johnson whose works I am currently gradually re-reading. Onwuemezi would especially claim an influence from Eley Williams (one of the stories here is, in the author’s words, “very directly inspired by her”).
The “dark” of the book’s title is a recurring theme and the world the stories created in my head as I read was a dark and gritty place.
In almost every collection of short stories that I have read there have been some stories that worked well for me and some with which I struggled. Of course, for other readers their view of each story will be exactly the opposite to mine. For me, the titular “Dark Neighbourhood” and “Heartbreak at the Super 8” (this is where I really started thinking about Johnson's writing) worked especially well, but the overall feel of the collection is what will stay with me the longest, I think.
This is only a short book and it is one that I think I would like to read again at some point.
The “dark” of the book’s title is a recurring theme and the world the stories created in my head as I read was a dark and gritty place.
In almost every collection of short stories that I have read there have been some stories that worked well for me and some with which I struggled. Of course, for other readers their view of each story will be exactly the opposite to mine. For me, the titular “Dark Neighbourhood” and “Heartbreak at the Super 8” (this is where I really started thinking about Johnson's writing) worked especially well, but the overall feel of the collection is what will stay with me the longest, I think.
This is only a short book and it is one that I think I would like to read again at some point.
October 14, 2021
Wonderful. Slippery
April 17, 2022
I was reluctant to read this because “surrealism” but I found that label a bit of a red herring. Far more prominent in this collection is an effort to find a new way of using language, resulting in a much more abstract construction of prose and imagery than one would be used to. It’s a different way of seeing, like an Impressionist painter producing quite a different image of a subject than a Realist painter would. Of course poetry would quite often use impressionistic language and, no surprise, Onwuemezi is a poet.
These stories require more concentration I think given the unfamiliarity of the prose style, and sense-making benefits from reading them more than once. You’ll notice repetitions of certain phrases and objects; I’m not sure if these are intentional or an accidental artifact. For instance, the phrase “love is the hardest thing” occurs in the first, fourth, and fifth of the seven stories. “Shadows fold neatly around corners” appears in the fourth and seventh stories. Nice phrase, that one, I’d use it more than once too I suppose.
My favorite stories are I think the first, “Dark Neighbourhood”, the fourth, “The Growing State”, and the last, “At the Heart of Things”.
Opening the collection to “Dark Neighbourhood” one quickly realizes the story is experimental in form, prose giving way to poetry and back again, extra gaps inserted between words seeming to seek an extra emphasis, and yes, it is somewhat surreal. Phrases like “All is lit with a blaze of shine-yellow” fired up my enthusiasm. Sometimes it read to me like an AI was tasked with creating lines of dialogue but more often it left me intrigued with the way language was being used to make us see in a new light, which worked well with the allegorical shape of the story’s plot.
Which is: encamped with a multitude of others before a closed gate, the narrator and his partner wait to pass through to imagined bliss on the other side, spending their time amassing the highest pile of somewhat random goods. I interpreted this as a Buddhist sort of story, warning us that centering our desires and attachment to material things in the belief they will lead us to happiness, a belief that our societies often encourage, is a fatally flawed model. Our combined efforts in this direction are in fact creating a wasteland unfit for forming the natural human connections that would truly allow us to thrive.
When the gate finally opens for the narrator at the story’s end, he realizes with horror that his desires and material things have not led to bliss, and he is left only with his unexamined self staring back at him. Too late, he wonders if there wasn’t another path he should have explored, rather than be swept along with the stream of mass conformity all around.
“The Growing State” seems to be about a dying man. One’s dying moments are conceivably quite surreal, so if ever surreality could be Realist, here we go. This story shares themes with the first. The narrator is a wealthy businessman known as “Winner”. He is dying in his office after a drug overdose, after a lifetime of failure in his relationships with wives and children and other people. He is ushered out of life by the office cleaning woman, who observes the unmet thirst hovering over his body. “I bleat like a body without a head, an open throat,” he agrees.
In a vision from his grave he sees what he has missed, imagining a more successful rootedness:
The final story “At the Heart of Things” is about a woman who has hit her head and is having dreams/hallucinations/experiences of being underwater. Her relations with various family members play out in silence down in the depths. Really this is just a story for the pleasure of reading its language and images, though near the end it does seem to have some kinship with the previous stories mentioned:
These stories require more concentration I think given the unfamiliarity of the prose style, and sense-making benefits from reading them more than once. You’ll notice repetitions of certain phrases and objects; I’m not sure if these are intentional or an accidental artifact. For instance, the phrase “love is the hardest thing” occurs in the first, fourth, and fifth of the seven stories. “Shadows fold neatly around corners” appears in the fourth and seventh stories. Nice phrase, that one, I’d use it more than once too I suppose.
My favorite stories are I think the first, “Dark Neighbourhood”, the fourth, “The Growing State”, and the last, “At the Heart of Things”.
Opening the collection to “Dark Neighbourhood” one quickly realizes the story is experimental in form, prose giving way to poetry and back again, extra gaps inserted between words seeming to seek an extra emphasis, and yes, it is somewhat surreal. Phrases like “All is lit with a blaze of shine-yellow” fired up my enthusiasm. Sometimes it read to me like an AI was tasked with creating lines of dialogue but more often it left me intrigued with the way language was being used to make us see in a new light, which worked well with the allegorical shape of the story’s plot.
Which is: encamped with a multitude of others before a closed gate, the narrator and his partner wait to pass through to imagined bliss on the other side, spending their time amassing the highest pile of somewhat random goods. I interpreted this as a Buddhist sort of story, warning us that centering our desires and attachment to material things in the belief they will lead us to happiness, a belief that our societies often encourage, is a fatally flawed model. Our combined efforts in this direction are in fact creating a wasteland unfit for forming the natural human connections that would truly allow us to thrive.
When the gate finally opens for the narrator at the story’s end, he realizes with horror that his desires and material things have not led to bliss, and he is left only with his unexamined self staring back at him. Too late, he wonders if there wasn’t another path he should have explored, rather than be swept along with the stream of mass conformity all around.
“The Growing State” seems to be about a dying man. One’s dying moments are conceivably quite surreal, so if ever surreality could be Realist, here we go. This story shares themes with the first. The narrator is a wealthy businessman known as “Winner”. He is dying in his office after a drug overdose, after a lifetime of failure in his relationships with wives and children and other people. He is ushered out of life by the office cleaning woman, who observes the unmet thirst hovering over his body. “I bleat like a body without a head, an open throat,” he agrees.
In a vision from his grave he sees what he has missed, imagining a more successful rootedness:
Strange how the light towards the end of the day presses a change in my mood. Long light and shadows fold neatly around corners, two-toned rocks, branches slick with under-shadow, pointed reaches of grass. Hello family, pushing roots into the earth they settle themselves here to keep me company. My closest friends and children and grandchildren sprout from the ground, just before my eyes melt. What shame. All throughout my life, there were trees, shrubs, and without looking I walked past.
The final story “At the Heart of Things” is about a woman who has hit her head and is having dreams/hallucinations/experiences of being underwater. Her relations with various family members play out in silence down in the depths. Really this is just a story for the pleasure of reading its language and images, though near the end it does seem to have some kinship with the previous stories mentioned:
After then, my travels down the tube rails seemed the stranger thing. Travelling into the city with the rest of them, sliding down the . Eye contact eyes snap away. The city demands a certain kind of contact only. It demands suspicions. Changes the meaning of a glance or a look of love, to yourself you keep your looks only to your own chest. It begins with everybody and nobody. People flashing lights they shoes, make up, rats’ tails and so on hinge-necked bulb-headed bug-eyed. We are all alike in this strangeness. But I was accustomed to the dark pressures of the water oh I’m no longer accustomed to this.
April 3, 2024
A very odd and surreal short story collection. This reminded me a lot of the way George Saunders writes and I find that his writing is always best read slowly and given a lot of attention to. This book also demands a lot of attention as the way it is written feels really difficult. The stories themselves have great concepts and feel very eerie, but upon listening to it, it almost felt like someone was narrating one of my dreams that I was trying desperately to make sense of. I think this is a book which when it is taken line-by-line and studied on a textual basis it will become really apparent how great it is, but as just a casual read this one didn't work for me.
January 7, 2022
"One bottle of water, three hundred and twenty books, one hundred packets of cigarettes, fifty lighters, three boxes of toothpicks, a baby bottle, five litres of whisky, one of gin, one hundred of vinegar, six kitchen knives, ninety tampons with applicators, ninety-five without, a small crate of ginger ale, a box of crispy fried onions, mismatched earrings, rings, bracelets, a love letter, two vials of insulin, five bags of glucose, earplugs, a month's supply of contraceptive pills, a letter of recommendation, eight bank statements, a lemon zester, thirty hairpins, ten syringes, a half-pint of blood."
(from 'Dark Neighbourhood', p13)
(from 'Dark Neighbourhood', p13)
January 21, 2026
hypnotic experimental, liminal, poetic fever-dream of short stories.
March 2, 2023
Compelling, fractured, strange. This book is structurally similar to my forthcoming novel, and imagines a unique dystopia whose liminality is punctured by occasional moments of frightening and prescient clarity.
October 25, 2021
If I had more hair it would be blown back. What a collection of daring prose! The risks Onwuemezi allows herself are inspirational. And this feels like a debut in all the best ways. She sets down a voice and style in the titular story (my favorite of the bunch) and then proceeds to explore the limits and range of that style throughout the collection. I think she finds some edges. There are moments in some of these stories that feel contrived, or if that isn't the right word maybe "an ineffective style to convey the emotional depths she aims for" is a better, if harsher, phrase. I don't think that's a knock, by the way. You can't take the kinds of chances she does without missing a few times and the misses are always interesting here.
What I can say is that I am excited about Vanessa Onwuemezi. A writer with this much courage and craft is bound to create a masterwork that is truly special as long as she keeps going. I can't wait to see what she does next.
What I can say is that I am excited about Vanessa Onwuemezi. A writer with this much courage and craft is bound to create a masterwork that is truly special as long as she keeps going. I can't wait to see what she does next.
April 6, 2022
Debut by Onwuemezi about whom I know nothing except she's a banging writer. This is kind of a collection of short stories except it's not short stories in the sense of narratives that are discontinuous. A lot of this occupies that sort of poetry / narrative / 'experimental' literature space but there's a lot of writerly virtuosity, as opposed to a kind of stylistic opacity. It is opaque, but possibly more the kind of opacity of reading signs from a moving train. There's a lot of elegance to her writing, her capacity to cover a lot of space by shifting between poetic / narrative registers; some in fully-formed, traditionally grammared sentences, some with quite extreme abruption but always in service of expression (if not elucidation). I got moved along by it without necessarily following where we were.
Well worth a punt if you ever found experimental writing a bit austere and bloodless - fuck knows how she got it published as a debut because although it's terrifyingly confident, the world doesn't usually publish these books as debuts. Or maybe it does, who could say.
If you know Fitzcarraldo Editions, you'll know they're absolutely lovely and this is no exception - nicely typeset with decent gutters. A real treat in a way smaller publishing houses are not always.
Well worth a punt if you ever found experimental writing a bit austere and bloodless - fuck knows how she got it published as a debut because although it's terrifyingly confident, the world doesn't usually publish these books as debuts. Or maybe it does, who could say.
If you know Fitzcarraldo Editions, you'll know they're absolutely lovely and this is no exception - nicely typeset with decent gutters. A real treat in a way smaller publishing houses are not always.
June 2, 2022
This is the best work of contemporary writing I have read in years. You only encounter a book that makes you feel this way every so often, I mean a book that feels like the author really achieved something original and stunning. Transcendent in that the skill and imagination is almost unearthly. Also, it is super funny.
abandoned
December 25, 2021Demasiado poético y experimental para mí. Una pena, porque pintaba bien, pero parece más un largo poema surrealista que una colección de relatos. Tendrá su público.
March 26, 2022
At first I thought the Kindle edition was very poorly edited, as the first story had all this inconsistent spacing and editorial directions in parenthesis, e.g., (full stop), (close bracket), and more. All of it made the story difficult to read. But since those were gone in the second story, I guess it was part of the experimental styles the author was trying. The book was short or I would have abandoned it. I did not connect with any of the stories. I did not like the style(s). Occasionally, I detected something that made sense and might have intrigued me if I weren't so confused as to what a particular story was about.
This was on the 2022 Republic of Consciousness prize long list. It was the last one of the nominees I had to read and the one I liked the least, knocking After the Sun out of last place.
This was on the 2022 Republic of Consciousness prize long list. It was the last one of the nominees I had to read and the one I liked the least, knocking After the Sun out of last place.
October 22, 2024
To be honest, the writing style and the nature of the stories in this collection left me a little bit wondering what the hell I just read, but the strength of the prose and what I KNOW I did read has me more than willing to go back to pick up more details in the future.
The prose here is so undeniably gorgeous and weird. I will be eagerly awaiting anything else Vanessa Oneuemezi puts out.
Also, just putting it down as a note here, I bought the Fitzcarraldo edition and must say the cover, texture, font, size and everything may make this my personal favorite book that I own just physically. Contents aside, this book is an art object.
The prose here is so undeniably gorgeous and weird. I will be eagerly awaiting anything else Vanessa Oneuemezi puts out.
Also, just putting it down as a note here, I bought the Fitzcarraldo edition and must say the cover, texture, font, size and everything may make this my personal favorite book that I own just physically. Contents aside, this book is an art object.
September 1, 2024
How do you even explain what this is? Ostensibly five stories, each one contains about three sentences of plot but are so rich and dense with feeling and imagery that whole lives are in there too. A prose style that’s highly unusual and poetic, it’s difficult to read at times, for me at least, requiring a slow pace and multiple re-reads in places, but all worth it. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything quite like it.
November 6, 2021
The stories in this collection are all concerned with ~~liminal spaces~~, using space as a capacious category for border zones both physical and mental. As the book progresses the stories get increasingly poetic and less narratively bound. Phrases ricochet from one story into the next and the overall feeling is a bit like a fever dream.
March 17, 2022
What an intense delight – rich, challenging, stimulating, unsettling, immensely satisfying… Each short story in this collection read as though they were jointly written by Virginia Woolf, Jon McGregor, James Joyce, Max Porter and Helen Oyeyemi. I’d love to read a novel from the author – it would be a fine feast indeed.
January 19, 2022
Strange, surreal and veeery experimental
August 17, 2022
very unique form of prose, the fragmentation fits some of the stories really well but some seemed like a bit of a stretch. cool experience tho, appreciate what the writers trying to do
August 26, 2025
sondan ikinci öyküye gelene kadar hayalkırıklığıydı, yazarken yanına sadece kendisini almış, okuru düşünmemiş...
son üç öyküyü bir nebe anladım
"Yaşil Öğle Sonrası" açık ara en iyisiydi
son üç öyküyü bir nebe anladım
"Yaşil Öğle Sonrası" açık ara en iyisiydi
November 24, 2021
Don't take this rating too seriously. I think my brain was just too tired to take this book in, so much went over my head, sometimes felt like it is written in a language I just know a handful of phrases of. I think it is a good book, just not ideal in exhausting times.
January 19, 2022
Really liked this, as the stories feel, and look, very much like poems, the visual breaks (in the lines) make it easier to hear the words, to appreciate the rhythms. Which pull you in and guide you along. The order in which the stories are presented also contributes to this overall rhythm. The 'Green Afternoon' is quite raw, beautiful and heartbreaking.
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