Vincent O'Sullivan, the New Zealand Poet Laureate, has written numerous collections of poetry, short stories, plays and critical works. He has a reputation as a master practitioner of the short-story genre, and his new collection, The Families, reconfirms that claim.
The title is a perfect entrance as these stories are chiefly about families - about relations between husbands and wives, parents and children. What I particularly love is the way such an economical form can expose such inviting complexity. The fathers and husbands are chalk and cheese: grumpy, bigoted; tender, insightful. To read through the collection is to read through the joys and blemishes of humanity.
O'Sullivan's writing is sinuous, perfectly paced and variously pitched with details of place that set the narrative alight. There are veins of internal self-examination that add another layer to the narrating voice. These stories build characters who matter, who get under your skin though their cringe-worthiness, their utter familiarity or their ability to shake and move you.
Sometimes he uses the genre to augment a moment as in Mrs Bennett and the Bears.
When Edward (he is married) meets Mrs Keiko Bennett in Japan, they are caught in a deluge of rain and he pulls her under his coat, just for a minute. It is a rare, shining moment in his life that he will store in his memory - it will stand as an unsurpassable moment of love. It was like a cinematic close-up that generates such heat and intensity it is palpable.
