{"id":5498,"date":"2014-11-03T11:50:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T11:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5498"},"modified":"2014-11-10T12:39:45","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T12:39:45","slug":"infidelities-by-kirsty-gunn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5498","title":{"rendered":"Infidelities by Kirsty Gunn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Faber 6 November 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

224pp, paperback, \u00a310.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This new collection of stories by the award-winning author Kirsty Gunn is divided into three sections:\u00a0 \u2018Going Out\u2019, \u2018Staying Out\u2019 and \u2018Never Coming Home\u2019.\u00a0 In various ways (and various settings, from the Scottish Highlands to New Zealand), Gunn is exploring the inner lives of women.\u00a0 At the same time, she is examining narrative, and the nature of story.<\/p>\n

Many of these tales highlight the loss of freedom in marriage, whether this comes from choosing or being chosen.\u00a0 In the first, a wife pursues a stranger barefoot into a wood, commenting on the wood\u2019s \u2018hundred little pathways\u2019, to one of which she \u2018walks straight in\u2019; on her return, her young daughter mistakes the muddy mess in her mother\u2019s bed for blood.\u00a0 In another story, an abandoned wife warms momentarily to an abandoned house eager to try out new owners.\u00a0 In \u2018The Wolf on the Road\u2019, a \u2018ravenous\u2019 wife swerves away from an affair (towards what exactly, is ambiguous).<\/p>\n

This is a collection full of suggestive possibility, things flirted with.\u00a0 Language and form themselves are played with, notably in the vivid, economical story \u2018Caravan\u2019, which is told in reverse, beginning with activity and drama and dying down into a silence broken only by the elements; and also in \u2018Scenario\u2019, a clever story about the language of art and the language of feeling.<\/p>\n

In the central section, four linked \u2018Highland Stories\u2019, one of Gunn\u2019s other subjects is to the fore:\u00a0 secret knowledge, things seen, what she calls sightings<\/em>. These four stories revolve around a sad, bewildered, angry boy called Bill, whose farming father is pushed \u2018to the edge\u2019 and over.\u00a0 Bill\u2019s need makes him brutal, and it takes the sensitivity of his cousin Ailsa to see his suffering.\u00a0 Here, Gunn\u2019s writing is strongly reminiscent of Alice Munro, reaching an impressive height in the final sentence of the sequence.<\/p>\n

Another aspect of Gunn\u2019s narrative prose worth noting is her imagery, which decorates her plain writing with grace notes.\u00a0 In \u2018Elegy\u2019, a dying woman decides to live in the moment; she experiences fleeting elation as like the flight of a bird, or the sound of a flute. \u00a0In \u2018Foxes\u2019, an open-air opera performed on a fairytale bandstand has its lovers passing from one to the next, \u2018the music like ribbons winding around them, binding them\u2026to their fate.\u2019<\/p>\n

Throughout these stories, both the playful and the searing, Gunn is looking at the equal and opposite values of risk-taking and security (in writing as much as in life).\u00a0 This contrast is sharply reflected in two stories, \u2018Tangi\u2019 and \u2018Dick\u2019, neither of which is about wives.\u00a0 In the first of these, the daughter of a correct mother relaxes into the embrace of her expressive grandma\u2019s home, where she can be sure of \u2018all one kind of known and familiar life\u2019 (a Munro-like phrase if ever there was one).\u00a0 In the second, a shattering tale of lost innocence, a man betrays his daughter, which is another version of infidelity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Many of these tales highlight the loss of freedom in marriage, whether this comes from choosing or being chosen. In the first, a wife pursues a stranger barefoot into a wood, commenting on the wood\u2019s \u2018hundred little pathways\u2019, to one of which she \u2018walks straight in\u2019; on her return, her young daughter mistakes the muddy mess in her mother\u2019s bed for blood […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5498"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5529,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5498\/revisions\/5529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}