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Souls Along The Meridian
Souls Along the Meridian is the latest collection of short fiction from William J Atheling award-winning Australian dark fiction author Bill Congreve. Each story bears Congreve's hallmark style - dark, prosaic and thought-provoking. From contemporary ghost stories to apocalyptic futures, from a deserted amusement park in an isolated town to the claustrophobic depths of the London Underground to the heat-drenched brutality of the Australian outback. These are tales of things we all hope and fear might just exist, somewhere, far from the safety of our lives. Souls along the Meridian is a book of dark futures and dreams. As the title story shows us, it is also a book about staying true to oneself in the face of whatever the world might throw at us. Prepare to be provoked and entertained.
202 pages, Paperback
First published July 26, 2010
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November 23, 2012
I'll be brutally honest here, at about the three-quarter mark through this book, I was going to give it three stars. I'm a fan of Bill Congreve's, but I found the early stories in this collection a little unengaging, and was hugely put off by the inconsistency of the afterwords; some stories had them and some didn't. Bill DOES account for this in his final afterword, but it was jarring and should probably have been stated in the FIRST afterword... and anyway, I wanted afterwords for ALL the stories, I wanted to hear more about each of them.
But then the final three stories, each very long, came along, and pushed this collection up into a solid four. "Legacy", "The Shooter at Heartrock Waterhole" (or "Heatrock Waterhole", according to each page's header... oops!) and "The Traps of Tumut" were, for my money, the strongest stories in the collection, being fully realised and fleshed out in a way that the other stories in the book weren't, in my opinion. These three alone are easily worth the asking price; the rest of the book is just icing on the cake, all good solid stories.
One thing I have to say about it is that there definitely aren't any throwaway stories in this book. Every one has something to say, they're all very personal and intense. This doesn't make for an easy read - there's not much light and shade to SOULS ALONG THE MERIDIAN, it's pretty much all shade - but that's kind of the point. It's a dark read, but a very worthwhile one.
Also, with the earliest story in the collection being from 1987, and the latest being 2010, that makes it 23 years worth of fiction, which beats my book. Damn you to hell, Congreve! ;)
But then the final three stories, each very long, came along, and pushed this collection up into a solid four. "Legacy", "The Shooter at Heartrock Waterhole" (or "Heatrock Waterhole", according to each page's header... oops!) and "The Traps of Tumut" were, for my money, the strongest stories in the collection, being fully realised and fleshed out in a way that the other stories in the book weren't, in my opinion. These three alone are easily worth the asking price; the rest of the book is just icing on the cake, all good solid stories.
One thing I have to say about it is that there definitely aren't any throwaway stories in this book. Every one has something to say, they're all very personal and intense. This doesn't make for an easy read - there's not much light and shade to SOULS ALONG THE MERIDIAN, it's pretty much all shade - but that's kind of the point. It's a dark read, but a very worthwhile one.
Also, with the earliest story in the collection being from 1987, and the latest being 2010, that makes it 23 years worth of fiction, which beats my book. Damn you to hell, Congreve! ;)
Displaying 1 of 1 review