The first story, ‘American Fiction’ by Louis Malloy sees an English couple sitting in a bar in LA. The male narrator has taken to speaking in American English, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend. He shies from vocally expressing his Englishness, as though his nationality is embarrassingly out of place. He’s a character who has bought into media images of America. His girlfriend is more down to earth. Their visit to the bar is interrupted by a man bursting through the door with a gun. Everyone ducks for cover. The police soon arrive and deal with the situation in typical gung-ho fashion. Even then, the male narrator seems caught in a fantasy of America, and of what he will tell people back home. ‘American Fiction’ is a well written story, one of the best in this issue of the magazine. The narrator’s tendency to talk like an American, even while narrating, is pretentious, but absolutely fits with a character who is caught inside his own myth of modern America.

Alex Emslie’s ‘The Cock’ starts with a guy in a local pub. A stranger sits down beside him and tries to sell him counterfeit DVDs. When they go outside to look at the merchandise, things take an unexpected turn. The title of the story refers to the name of the pub, but also potentially gives away too much about the ending. Because otherwise the twist in this story might not be anticipated by the reader. The story is well written and a little different from most of the stories in the small press.

’The Supermarket Dissolved as the Past Echoed Through to the Present’ is a collaborative work by James Quinton and Heidi James. It starts with a quote from ‘Wuthering Heights’. The piece consists of short sections, alternating from a male and female perspective, and describing a love affair and the meeting of the two ex-lovers years later. Although I liked this story up to a point, the sections themselves are very short, creating a fragmented quality that could have been avoided by amalgamating two or three of each character’s narrations together. The reader also has to work hard sometimes to figure out which character is narrating, possibly in part because the two voices are actually quite similar. Alternating between two different fonts might have helped clarify things. Still, the story has ambitions and it’s nice to see what writers come up with when they collaborate. There’s also some pretty good writing in this story.

Another piece worth reading in issue 17 is ‘Smoke Without Fire’ by Rachel Lawrence. There’s also writing from Tom Leins, Danny Bernardi, and the latest instalment of ‘Diary of an Artist’, a humorous look at a fictional poet ( at least I think he’s fictional!) from W.P. Swindon. Swindon’s take on the character rings all too true for me.

As for the poetry in the magazine, my favourites were ‘So The Story Goes’ by Casey Rearick, which shows a wonderful clarity and simplicity (her ‘Splitting Image’ also has some beautiful lines) and ‘The Night’ by D.B. Cox, a regular name in the small press. In fact fans of D.B. Cox will find other works of his here. ‘The Bath’ by Sue Stanford is also well worth reading, as is ‘The Long, Lean Years’ by Lisa LaTourette, and there are others too that caught my eye. In ‘Paki in the Middle’ Salman Shaheen writes about ordinary Muslims suffering and caught between the extremists on either side who wage war. His poem ‘The Highway’ protests against complacent coffee house capitalism and asserts the right to alternative lifestyles. There’s actually quite a lot of poetry in this magazine, and a lot of reading in general. This is due to the text layout which avoids any waste of space. There are reviews of books and music, and an interview with stand-up comedian Stewart Lee.

On the negative side there are some formatting problems where one writer in particular doesn’t seem to know that every new paragraph / change of viewpoint on a new line should be indented, leading to inconsistencies in layout which can be distracting. There were a few other small errors, but overall Open Wide does seem to be offering readers a decent amount of reading for their money. The quality of the contents has also gone up over the past few issues. Though the production values are not comparable to some other literary magazines, Open Wide challenges the middle class complacency of many lit mags. There’s a strong need in literary fiction for working class voices; and grittier voices too that provide a more realistic glimpse of how most people live. While working class voices predominate in Scottish literary fiction, the same is not really true of English fiction. Open Wide contributes in its own way to filling that gap.

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.