'There is in the short story at its most characteristic, something we don't often find in the novel, an intense awareness of human loneliness." The bible on the Irish short story, Frank O'Connor's The Lonely Voice, sums up the essence of the form. A lack of connection – with those closest to us, with our neighbours, with our neighbouring countries – is a perennial in Irish short fiction, from Edna O'Brien's marginalised women to Kevin Barry's hapless male loners.
Loneliness is a recurring theme in Martin Malone's latest collection. Difficult subjects – war trauma, self-harm, murder and death – are explored. This is familiar terrain for the Kildare-born author, who has written eight previous books including an award-winning debut novel, Us (2000), and The Broken Cedar (2003). A number of stories within this new collection come highly recommended: Love in a Cold Shadow won the Francis McManus award; Mingi Street was shortlisted for the Hennessey; Halabja was longlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times EFG award.
Malone served five tours of duty in Lebanon, in addition to spells in Israel and Iraq, and his knowledge of the Middle East is evident. From desecrated Kurdish villages, to Lebanese towns manned by the UN, to the popular coastal cities of Israel, he flits across the region and deftly evokes the various locations with an outsider’s eye for detail.
Deadly Confederacies and Other Stories is a sizeable collection, with 24 stories stretching to more than 300 pages. Some stories fare better than others. Certain characters don't convince. While the idea behind The Archbishop's Daughter is moving and real – a baby disowned to avoid clerical scandal – the various letters that comprise the story, and the way these are introduced, point heavily to the author. Elsewhere, epitaphs are amended to a story after a narrator dies, with clear authorial instructions.
The dysfunctional relationships at the heart of the collection are strongest when left to speak for themselves. Love in a Cold Shadow is an interesting snapshot of the long-term effects of divorce and emigration on children. Taming the Wolves tells the story of a man whose "wires in his head would have melted" if he hadn't walked out on his wife and son.
A Day Unlike Any Other gets to the heart of a tired and failing relationship, weighed down with money issues. Dialogue is true to life: innocent observations become grating repetitions to a fed-up partner; gaps in conversations carry the whiff of contempt. In Ritual a woman has cause to remember her murdered husband, their young love and aspirations vividly evoked, creating a powerful understanding of the bitterness that endures decades later. Mingi Street deals with an older couple, a quieter and more natural slide towards death that is equally poignant.
One of the most memorable stories is Halabja, which gets inside the head of an Iranian teenager, from his hatred of early mornings, to a prized porn collection he shares with his brother, to the surreal and appalling loss he suffers when his village is wiped out by war. The Stand House also looks at loss, in an intriguing narrative that sees its ageing protagonist refuse to go back and face his demons: "To speak less coldly to her; to smother a habit before it had set up home within him."
The suspenseful title story and its creepy narrator make for interesting reading, the horrors he commits contrasting nicely with his everyday routines as husband and father. Spread out over 15 years, the short-story frame may be too tight for this narrative, which is more feature film than snapshot.
The predominantly male narrators in this collection tend to vilify or victimise women. A misogynistic streak runs through many of the stories. Women are adulterers, sluts, mothers who reject children with special needs, cheerless waitresses, voodoo practitioners.
Young girls are raped, "oul wans" are murdered, wives are cheated on and often oblivious. Back from military service and interested in no-strings sex, the Israeli woman, Tabitha, in Netanya seems strong and well-adjusted. Until she deliberately gives venereal disease to her unwitting partners because: "I want to give men something to remember me by."
The biggest problem lies with the endings of certain stories, where the author's voice is given a platform to sum up what has gone before or to elucidate a wider significance. A Lasting Impression leaves a less than favourable one, finishing with addendums that overexplain the bearing a kindly boss had on the narrator's life. The beautifully depicted relationship between a boy and his ailing father in Prairies loses impact with similar interjections.
That intense awareness of human loneliness is there throughout Malone’s collection, but is most affecting when the characters are left to show us it themselves.
