Dark stories to make you brave: That Stubborn Seed of Hope

The short stories that have stayed with me over time are the ones that make me gasp at an unexpected revelation, or sigh when two essentially disparate things (people or ideas or beliefs or understandings or accidents) come together in a way that is both surprising and just right. But my absolute favourite stories are the ones that manage to plumb the depths of human brokenness and this dark world yet still point to a shining glimmer of grace in the midst of it.

So I was a little bit in love with That Stubborn Seed of Hope before I even started reading. The title, pulled from a quote from Bridge to Terabithia (again: LOVE), encapsulates my philosophy of story, and speaks to one of the things I treasure most in children’s and YA fiction. It might stem from the fact that I dined quite heavily on Anne of Green Gables growing up, but I firmly believe that while children and teenagers are forced to look tragedy and heartache and confusion squarely in the face just as frequently as adults, there is often also a beautiful spark of hope intrinsic within youth that promises something more. The best children’s and YA fiction reflects that. While not shying away from grief and grit, it also promises, sometimes in just a whisper, that the story doesn’t end here, that it’s possible to get knocked down and get up again.

That Stubborn Seed of Hope does this admirably. While the stories are unconnected in terms of characters, voice, setting, genre, and events, they are linked in that they stare roundly at something frightening – disease, death, shame, loss – while also offering up a kernel of hope. The voices of Brian Falkner’s characters are alternately cynical, wistful, angry, insecure, bewildered, and even sinister, but there is a warmth to these characters that’s endearing and compelling. "I Am 17" is something like Gregor Samsa meeting Benjamin Button. "The Kiss" reveals a post-apocalyptic Australia -- life, but not as we know it. "Strawberry Lou" is a tiny tale that packs an emotional whallop. "Sins and Griefs" explores blossoming sexuality, otherness, and the longing for belonging. The rest I’ll leave you to discover on your own. I loved each one, but I particularly enjoyed the stories that focus on sibling relationships. There just aren’t enough love stories about families.

In this collection, some of the pieces are funny, others deeply sad. Regardless of outcome, each story offers an emotional gut punch and the reassurance that life is rarely all good or all bad, but usually a little of both at once. The author declares in his introduction that “[w]e can endure almost anything in our lives as long as there remains that stubborn seed of hope.” These stories are a compelling, readable, deliciously-written and ultimately courage-giving testament to that.

That Stubborn Seed of Hope
Brian Falkner
Published July 2017 by UQP
214 pages
9/10

For the love of short stories -- and bad men.

I first encountered the power of the short form during high school. The curriculum covered a cross-section of English literature from Shakespeare through to Dickens, George Eliot and beyond. It also dipped into the short fiction of some truly great writers, and I was captivated. Something-something years later, I can still remember the feeling those stories left me with, even when the details of the narrative are fuzzy. It’s a sense of deep satisfaction at an arc of discovery perfectly executed. It’s that little gasp at the twist I didn’t see coming. It’s the unsettledness of a non-resolution that is somehow more right than a happy ending. It’s Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace. O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party. Tolstoy’s Where Love is, There God is Also. Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. These stories cling to me even now, bearing a sense of wonder and breathless appreciation.

Yet, in spite of their power, I often forget to read short stories. I think, perhaps, that the form is not as appreciated now as it once was, and certainly not as celebrated and honoured as longer fiction. Which means that it’s not as much in conversation, even though the writing of short fiction requires an entirely different element of mastery than the writing of longer forms. So I’m grateful for anything that pushes me back into the biting embrace of short fiction and reminds me anew of how fantastic it is.

The last few months have done exactly that for me as I’ve dipped into short stories both new and old. Over the next little while I’ll be telling you about the short story collections I’ve encountered. This week, it’s The Love of a Bad Man, an August release from Scribe Publications by ridiculously-talented author, Laura Elizabeth Woollett.

The Love of a Bad Man is a collection of twelve short stories, each of which focusses on a woman in love with one of history’s notoriously “bad” men. There's Eva Braun, Hitler’s young wife; Blanche Barrow, a “fringe member” of Bonnie and Clyde’s gang and married to Clyde’s brother Buck; Charles Manson’s sister-wives. The stories of these and nine other women cross countries, generations, and settings to tell their tales in a blend of true crime and literary fiction.

The voices are flawless, each one unique yet linked by a sense of destructive destiny as each woman surrenders her morality for the love of a man. These women follow their men willingly because they genuinely believe they must; it’s their allotted path.

Sometimes deceptively sweet, these stories place softness and hardness side by side. The muted horror underplays the moral black holes these characters have stepped through and the focus is, instead, on the ordinariness of love and the magnetism of woman to man. It reveals the deceptions these women don’t even realise they’re believing -- or choosing not to examine -- coupled with woman’s capacity to love even the most undeserving of creatures."Ray always had a plum way of mixing his lies up with something like truth," Martha says, at once acknowledging and pardoning.

There's a chilling normalcy to the crimes that offers insight into the question, "But how could anybody do that?"  For better or for worse, these stories bring out the person within the monster, and not the other way around. In other moments, evil lies right there on the surface, provoking revulsion and despair. Sometimes the darkness was so black I had to turn away and look at the sun for a moment – which says as much about the impact of these stories as it does about my own squeamishness.

It is not surprising, then, that these stories will not be for everyone. What is surprising is how much empathy Woollett draws from these characters, showing how the women rewrite the meaning and significance of their actions to shape the narrative through the lens of their relationship.

For the women of these stories, theirs are not acts of moral degradation but of love. Their crimes are not the taking of something from a victim but the giving of something to a lover. There’s a sense of sacrifice here which makes the stories and their characters at once disturbing and compelling. In The Love of A Bad Man, love is truly blind.

The Love of a Bad Man
Laura Elizabeth Woollett 
Published August 2016 by Scribe Publications
240 pages