Captives (Angela Meyer, Inkerman & Blunt)

18 February 2014 Unlocked content from the archive. Books+Publishing

In her first book of fiction, writer and literary journalist Angela Meyer demonstrates her gift for painting vivid pictures with a few adroit, restrained brush strokes. ‘Few’ being the operative word here—with a median length of around two pages, the short stories in Captives owe a great deal to the ‘flash fiction’ favoured by Lydia Davis and occasionally dabbled in by Dave Eggers and Jennifer Egan. Like these authors, Meyer eschews straightforward narrative arcs in her quest to explore the deepest, darkest corners of the human psyche. The fact that Meyer’s stories often can’t be followed the way stories are ordinarily followed is not meant to alienate her readers, it is simply how her tone—which is at once bracing and invigorating—works best. Inevitably, some of the 37 stories here are much stronger than others, and not every tale has lasting resonance, but some linger long in the mind, like the one about the tightrope walker’s daughter, who watches in quiet trepidation as her father edges along ‘a curled, fine hair’. More than simply a series of small scenes, this is a masterly collection crafted by a powerful wordsmith.

Jennifer Peterson-Ward is a freelance reviewer and professional writing and publishing academic who divides her time between Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

Category: Reviews