The winning story, ‘Masonry’ by Rob McClure Smith, is a delight. There are shades of Alan Warner in the humour. The story has a completely bizarre set up. A young woman, a model, is climbing half-naked up the exterior of a Chicago hotel to spy on the boyfriend she suspects is cheating on her. On the way up, she has some Warnereque encounters. When a piece of masonry comes away:

‘I pick up the dislodged piece and hand it to Hiram Abif, my agent, who materialises at an adjacent window.

“Thanks,” he says, tossing it inside the hotel room. “I was seeing you on the telly. You know, after this, your career is lifting-off mode. Whoosh. Into stratosphere. Imagine publicity now. We break America! Could Kirsty Hume be doing this? I think not.” He turns suddenly reflective. “Just don’t fall to horrible squishy death,” he adds.’

And on she goes, heading “north,” witnessing a mysterious ceremony as she passes a window, a couple having sex at another, and a man masturbating as he watches her climbing the building on the TV news.

As with Warner’s ‘Morvern Callar’ character, McClure Smith’s narrator is self-consciously female. She talks in designer label and fashion terms that perhaps go beyond her job. If there is any criticism to be made, it’s that a female writer might not put quite so much emphasis on feminine accoutrements, even if her character was a fashion model.

McClure Smith likes to play with words and images:

“My poor keelhauled heart is a tattered vessel now. He used to crack wise about her thick ankles, smiling like a leopard. But watching his eyes poodle after her Manolo Blahniks on that Milan runway, I knew he still found her only too mattressable.”

‘Masonry’ is a story full of bizarre characters, off-beat humour, and excellent writing.

Another story that stands out is Linda Cracknell’s ‘The Weight of the Earth and The Lightness of the Human Heart.’ Even if the title is something of a mouthful. It’s a beautiful story with a mysterious and mythic heart. A pagan heart. Set at Halloween, when a climber is lying on a mountain, freezing to death, the narrator is unnamed, undefined and most certainly not human.

‘Aurora Borealis’ by Kenneth Shand recounts a young man’s infatuation with a girl named Aurora who bruises easily. Naturally, the colours of these marks are reminiscent of the Northern Lights. This is one of those stories that sticks in your mind afterwards.

There’s a variety of styles operating in ‘North.’ A number of stories use dialect. One of the best is ‘Slow Train’ by Mary McIntosh, which perfectly captures Northern dialect. You can really hear this narrator speak. It’s one of the briefer pieces in the collection, but has a glittering dark humour and a nice twist.

‘From The North’ by Vivien Jones explores the corruption of innocence. A man once got lost in a blizzard as a boy, and was only found because of his bright red jacket. As an adult, with white hair and beard and a florid face, he decides to act out his fantasy of Santa Claus, buying a red jacket with a white fur trim and surprising the local children in the woods. But the world now is one where an innocent gesture is misinterpreted. The paranoia at the heart of modern-day society infiltrates the character until he doesn’t know himself what his motives were in dressing up. Set against a winter landscape of snow, this is a beautifully told story that is only too believable.

‘White Food, Red Food’ by Geraldine Perriam looks back to the narrator’s Chinese grandmother, rescued during the War by a Scots soldier. When he finds her, she’s in hiding, clutching her dead child.

“He wrapped my son in a blanket and put him into the harbour. He used stones to make him sink. He told me. I didn’t see. Too busy dying of the fever. He told me later. He couldn’t bury him and he couldn’t burn him, so he put him into the water.”

The soldier eventually takes her back to Scotland. ‘White Food, Red Food’ is one of a number of more internationally flavoured stories. Lydia Robb’s ‘Taking the Flight Path’ is another. Here an expatriate Scotswoman, living in Spain, clearly longs for home. Life abroad does not make her happy. ‘Silk Knickers, Hard Floor’ by Chloe Wolsey-Ottaway has a Scandinavian-Edinburgh background, and features a narrator of mixed oriental/European parentage. A chance encounter with a painting in an Edinburgh gallery window propels the woman back to her past relationship with the female artist. The title comes from her taste in expensive underwear. ‘Aurora Borealis’ too has a Scandinavian connection. While ‘Landing in the North’ by Martin Bott follows a Sri Lankan bus driver in Edinburgh, and a talking bird. It’s a nice light piece that finishes off the collection.

Motherhood is the subject of three stories: in ‘Our Big Day Out’ by Tracey Emerson, a mother appears to be telling her child about the day she discovered she was pregnant. But, things are not what they seem. When the narrator shows her unborn child around town, it’s to experience what will be a fleeting and poignant relationship between them. The following tale, ‘Joy’ by Celaen Chapman also reveals a less traditional and cosy view of motherhood. This is a woman who leaves her baby in the car to go to work, and who takes up residence in abandoned offices. The implicit joy of motherhood, highlighted in the title, which is also the child’s name, is far from reality here. ‘All She Had to Do Was Wait’ by Alison Flett is perhaps less fixed on the theme of motherhood. Yet there’s a young woman with a baby here. Meanwhile, the supposed father, a romantic figure, has gone off to America. But of course, there are things to be revealed. Ultimately, this story sets romantic dreams and life as the character would wish it against a more mundane reality.

Paul Cuddihy’s ‘Let It Be’ explores the grim world of prostitution. A young girl is picked up by a punter. They drive to a deserted car park. Threading through the tale is the characters’ passion for The Beatles. There’s a poignant moment when the girl remembers singing into her hairbrush in her bedroom. Now she’s about to give oral sex for a measly £15 and she’s still a teenager. Playing out in Glaswegian dialect, this is a story that treads a very ambiguous line. We don’t know until the end whether this girl is in danger, nor whether the accounts of her past are leading to some dark revelation that might come to explain her present life.

Of the other stories in the collection, Dorothy Alexander’s ‘Dr Fenton Dozes in a Shaft of Sunlight that Dusts its Parallels down from a High Window’ reads like a stream of consciousness. There are no paragraph breaks, and the images and thoughts are broken up from time to time by ellipses. John Aberdein’s ‘Moving’ also has a slightly experimental feel in its dependence on dialogue and short scenes. The Scott Monument in Edinburgh features in this story briefly, and it is the scene of the conclusion to the delightful ‘Cross Words’ by Ian Moore. Here a Miss Marple type is convinced that one of the crossword creators at The Scotsman newspaper is a murderer. She believes that the details of local murders are being planted in the crosswords before the deaths actually take place.

‘Forty Minutes’ by Evelyn Weir and ‘Strange Glitter: A Fairy Tale’ by Judith Logan venture into the territory of mental health. ‘Forty Minutes’ takes place in a psychiatrist’s office where the patient relives the past, and comes to discover the possibility of happiness and a brighter future. ‘Strange Glitter’ is darker and more fragmented, like the personalities at its heart.

Iain Mackintosh’s ‘North of the Law’ is a darkly humorous tale about two youths who hold up the cashier at the local cinema. Dialect plays to great effect in this one. The police are called, where they’ve been sitting in the station watching a game show.

“A small detachment gains merciful release from the tube an’ sallies forth. They decide against body armour an’ automatic weapons, so they’re fairly sharp at the scene. Well, maybe early would be a better word.

A masterful polis unveils the plan: “Richt, nane o’ yiz get awa’ till yiz huv made statements.”

The cashier can’t give her statement since her false teeth were broken in the struggle, but the policeman takes out his own plate and she is fluent in no time. There’s plenty of deadpan Scots humour in this one.

‘Seaborne’ by Max McGill plays out in a fishing village where the houses and perhaps the people too are covered in grey harling. The author threads two narratives together, letting them interplay until the two characters finally come together fleetingly.

‘North’ comes with an introduction by competition judge Jackie Kay. For lovers of the short story, and those who like to write them, this collection is well worth acquiring. And what is particularly heartening about the book is the number of first-time writers who appear in it. As ‘North’ perfectly illustrates, there is plenty of writing talent in Scotland. Lets hope that next year’s competition throws up an equally rewarding collection.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.