Emma Neale (ed): Creative Juices

By MARGIE THOMSON

If you were ever in doubt as to the amount of writing talent around, this collection of stories selected from four creative writing classes is proof that there is some really inventive, interesting stuff coming, much of it from frighteningly young writers. The selected work comes from both Bill Manhire's and Harry Ricketts' classes at Victoria University of Wellington, Witi Ihimaera's class at Auckland University and Owen Marshall's at Aoraki Polytechnic, Timaru. The themes addressed are both contemporary and universal: loneliness, social outsiders, relationship breakdowns, childhood, bigotry, growing up, identity.

I really liked the opening story, Rebecca Lovell-Smith's One Dozen Cheerios, both for its form (24 linked sections, each exactly 100 words long), and its pithy observations of family dynamics, personalities and divorce. But there are lots of other great stories here, too - skilful observances of character such as in Jill Herron's Ollie Invers; the innovative, oblique exploration of sexual and cultural difference in S. R. Charters' Please May I Leave The Table; J. F. Barbosa's kaleidoscopic account of his father's impoverished beginnings in Portugal, called Stories My Father Told Me and more. Yes, at times there is a student-ish feel here (but that's what gives some of these stories their structural playfulness), and an overall approach which can best be described as very tight-focused, as if a microscope has been rather claustrophobically trained in on the details of very ordinary lives.

Neale has done an excellent job in selecting and placing these stories, which tumble one after another almost with a sense of overall narrative. Many of these writers are in their early 20s, with a long way to go. But this is a fine beginning. Expect a welter of novels soon.

HarperCollins

$29.95