The variety of people and places, like the talents that produce them are certainly as wide as any enthusiast could hope for. Drama, humour and pathos surge through provincial Ireland, Scotland, on military bases, in theatres, on underground train stations. A common subject is love; another, inevitably, is the uphill struggle to establish oneself: in marriage, in work, and, of course, in art. This led to some rather self-conscious entries. Nevertheless some good stories are on display, and even some very fine ones. Take Lesley Glaister’s story, ‘Rhinoceros’, and her irresistible opening sentence: ‘They kissed.’ Glaister’s tale grows beautifully into a potent fable of missed connections and lingering hope. Or take Carey Jane Hardy’s ‘Face to Face’, her wonderful story of love, missed connections, and – that rare thing in contemporary fiction–optimism, difficult, agonising and necessary:

“I climb the eleven polished steps twice a month and talk to Wil. […] We talk of things that are not always understood outside our four walls. And these moments nurture me and show me that my memory – intact and clear through strangely severed from its context - allows the picture of tomorrow to grow a little clearer. That is important to me. Yesterday is passed. Tomorrow is still to be lived, albeit differently.”

The narrator is a woman, unnamed, blind, vulnerable and haunted by horrifying nightmares of being murdered violently by a rampaging polar bear. The woman recalls only the most vivid flashes of colour, the most extreme sensations in her memory’s eye – and all are a source of ongoing terror, particularly in solitude. Company, at times, is scarcely any better. Much like Sophia in ‘Good Morning, Midnight,’ the woman’s tone is matter-of-fact, distanced, utterly devoid of self-pity even as it records personal decay and isolation. But through the woman’s limited, if curiously detailed, point of view, we become involved movingly in a struggle to go forwards, to break free from an exile thrust upon her. This becomes a mutual act. Hardy achieves it without a hint of sentimentality:

“It is a moment before I hear him stand too. He takes my hand and lifts them to his face. Only now do I press my thumbs do I press my thumbs flat against his eyebrows, and my fingers around the shape of his jaw, and the palms of my hands across his hair. And so at last I see him. And it is as though the sun had plumbed the depths of the ocean floor, and flooded with light a hitherto sunless sea.”

Not every piece equals the quality of the above story, or of Erica Wagner’s wonderful ‘Miss Brooks’, a story which, like the ‘Face to Face’, failed to make the final three. There is a sense of Young-Talent-Being-Pushed-Uphill. This, surely, must be explain the judges’ decision to include Rachael McGill’s painfully derivative story – the anthology’s opener – ‘Butter Fish Parrot Fish’, a story which may politely be described as the worst story Raymond Carver never wrote. But this doesn’t apply solely to the new blood. Maggie O’Farrell’s story, alas, is all polish and no passion. But these minor blemishes aside, ‘Shoe Fly Baby’ is an entertaining, perceptive anthology. If the short story is to assume the importance in UK literary culture it enjoys in the US, anthologies – and talent – as shown here will be an instrumental part of it.

Ryan Williams was born in Birmingham in 1981, and spent his childhood in provincial England. He attended a number of Midlands schools and later Bath Spa University College, where he studied under Tessa Hadley. He has a personal library of over 400 books and counting.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.