Owen Marshall: Essential New Zealand Short Stories

By PENNY BIEDER

A companion volume to Essential New Zealand Poems (edited by Lauris Edmond and Bill Sewell), this collection of short stories carefully chosen by Owen Marshall has, I suspect, begun its journey to becoming a New Zealand classic.

As one reads the 45 stories presented in chronological order of publication, from Katherine Mansfield's The Doll's House of 1922 to Sarah Quigley's 1999 story Transportation, there is a growing awareness that not only are these all superb and often well-known stories, but they portray the social order or disorder of their time as a background landscape, whether intentionally or not.

The early stories are often grim and sad and reveal how restrictive and righteous people were with each other, but they are also stories about people who stood up to the establishment, or who were outsiders observing the fragile veneer of civilisation that overlaid a tough world. In Frank Sargeson's A Man of Good Will, an eccentric is finally squashed.

In Greville Texidor's Home Front (1942), Rex returns from Spain to visit a dead comrade's rural family but finds they do not want to hear his war stories. Dan Davin's bleak tale about the fatal results of back street abortion, and Maurice Shadbolt's devastating story of an unemployed family seeking work at a mine seem to be from a much harsher, more judgmental time.

As our most honoured living writer of short stories, Marshall is well-suited to select the pieces for this edition, and there is a sense of fine symmetry and wisdom in his choices.

In his Introduction he reports he had to raise the gangplank "before all my choices could come aboard, but in at least one case the length of an individual story prevented its inclusion. Even the very best of our writers are limited to a single work."

These single works create a sensation of enormous energy as one reads each differing voice. As Marshall also noted, the stories present a gathering crescendo of increasing variety and richness - "all manner of new magnetism is at work, and it is excitingly obvious when Maori writing, feminist writing, post-modernism or gay writing kicks in".

With the early stories there is a predominance of men and boys. Maurice Duggan's powerful Blues for Miss Laverty reveals that even as recently as 1961 it was not a good time to be a single woman down on her luck. But as the stories near the present, there is a colourful blossoming, of humour and style and sensuality. Having said that, there is not one weak link, not one unsatisfactory tale - they are all as "essential" as the title suggests.

I could not help wondering if Marshall has his favourite. For what it's worth here is my personal pennyworth:

Favourite story - Putting Bob Down by Vincent O'Sullivan - an elegant, gorgeous story of love and death and literature told with such panache it took my breath away.

Scariest story - The Rule of Jenny Pen by Owen Marshall - to be skipped by those feeling vulnerable or fragile, I found this story truly horrific, even if it is redeemed by its just ending. Crealy, an 81-year-old misfit in a rest home is the most ghastly creation in the book, and I could not help wondering if Marshall had ever come across anyone like him, or maybe he resembles a former pupil of his, with his adolescent glee in causing serious offence.

Saddest story: The Silk by Joy Cowley.

Funniest story: Bub Bridger's The Wheeler's Jewel.

But enough of this. These stories are not in competition with each other. They complement, contrast and there are echoing themes but, best of all, they are all so good and chosen by such a confident master of the form, each one is a rare treat.

With the usual high production values associated with Godwit, this is an attractive book, lovely to hold and handle, with a type font of great simplicity that is a pleasure to read for young or old eyes.

It would make a marvellous gift for someone overseas to show them what we are doing (and have done) here, but you won't want to give your copy away.

Godwit

$39.95

* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.