Frankie McMillan: The Bag Lady's Picnic and other stories

By PENELOPE BIEDER

A first collection of short stories comes from a young South Island writer (she lives in both Golden Bay and Christchurch) who is yet another successful graduate of Bill Manhire's Victoria University writing course.

In 126 short, provocative pages we are introduced to a wonderful range of characters winding up or unwinding their lives, looking ahead and looking back.

This volume is a significant milestone for Shoal Bay Press as during their 18 years of publishing they have never accepted any serious fiction. When they read McMillan's stories they "simply had to publish them - for here was a fresh local talent the like of which we had never encountered before." Quite an accolade to live up to, and this collection does just that.

There is the Marshmallow Queen wrestling with her love life while producing tray after tray of lime-green or dusty-pink creamy marshmallows in a kitchen not quite up to the task. "Cliff said if I was Sweets then he was Sales, and at first it worked out well." When it all gets too much she decides to leave Cliff Hinkley, the love of her life, and visit Aunt Bernice in Foxton where she takes a job at Pet Foodie Palace and finds herself packing pigs' ears and tails. Although this work is not quite what she had in mind it gives our Marshmallow Queen time to sort out her big plans ...

While many of the people who inhabit these stories have been knocked around a bit by life, they are never dreary or sorry for themselves. With splendid, taut dialogue and a keen eye for everyday absurdities McMillan's strength is in the infectious energy she invests in her storytellers.

Their predicaments ring true, their fears and anxieties are recognisable, but what is startling is the wonderful, fresh, simple writing: "Beauport's voice was heavy and breathless, like he was speaking from inside a damp sack." Or take the first lines of Lost Loves - "Wellington is a city of lost loves. You can tell from the street faces: weary eyes and disappointed mouths set tight against the wind. There's that same look about the cable car drivers. Somehow their Eastern European faces say it all. I mean, you just know there's a lost wife out there called Una."

In Mozzie's Gift, elderly Mozzie is sensibly looking ahead, travelling to Dunedin to meet the Bequest Coordinator because he is considering gifting his body to medical science. And in Friends of My Mother, Joy and her sister look back, remembering the two very different, equally wonderful "aunts" who inhabited their childhood.

This writing and these stories announce the arrival of a strong new voice on the New Zealand literary scene. McMillan is working on her first novel.

Shoal Bay Press

$24.95

* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.