 |
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales by Anna
Tambour
by Keith Brooke
Note: This piece also appears in slightly different
form as the introduction to Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales
(Prime Books, 2003 - see below for ordering information).
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales
Somewhere deep in the Australian bush, surrounded by an extended family
of  cockatoos
and goannas, wombats, kangaroos and fruit bats, there lives an author
who writes miraculous little fabulations, each crammed with invention
and insight and humour and above all a quirky difference that
makes them quite unlike the work of any other. She tends these creations,
breathes life into each one and lets them loose into a far-too-often-uncaring
world.
These little gems, for all their vitality, cannot exist in a vacuum.
Publishing is an industry, and a competitive one at that. In my own
country alone (albeit at the opposite end of the world to the one where
these stories are crafted), tens of thousands of new books are published
every year; among them, so many talented voices are stifled, drowned
out in the clamour. These voices need nurturing, they need attention
-- particularly the special ones, like that of our whimsical outback
author.
Fortunately, Anna Tambour is starting to get that attention, quite
deservedly so, and she is certain to get much more. Even in a crowded,
clamorous throng, some voices stand out above the others -- the loudest,
for sure, but also those that are different, the ones with wit and wisdom,
the ones that dare to surprise.
Anna Tambour's is one of the voices that stands out, and for all the
best reasons.
I talked my way into writing the foreword to this volume on the strength
of a handful of off-beat and quite brilliant stories Anna has submitted
to me at infinity plus. Now, having read all
the contents of this collection, I have been struck over and over by
a series of triumphs.
Much of the time, I have read with a smile on my face, not only for
the wit these stories contain, but for the sheer audacity of the author.
In many cases, I start reading and then find myself wondering how on
earth she expects to get away with this premise or that. Describe them
to a friend, as I did recently, and they often sound, to put it bluntly,
quite silly. There's one about Robert Louis Stevenson's travels through
the Cévennes which is told by his donkey; another about a magical
piece of linoleum; and another which is a potted history of food, and
God's distaste for our tastes, not forgetting His secret garden atop
Everest... Yet, just as that how-could-she-try-this thought strikes,
so it is dismissed by a twist, a turn, a feint, and you find yourself
swallowed up in whichever strange conceit is currently being explored.
There is far too much in this collection to make it a worthwhile exercise
to itemise its contents here, but I cannot go without dwelling on the
many highlights.
Many of the stories contained here take the form of the traditional
fairytale, although they are re-cast in a way that is distinctly Tambourian.
"Temptation of the Seven Scientists" tells the stories of seven scientists
in search of a Great Theory -- naturally enough (and it does seem natural,
in this author's hands), in a forest teeming with Great Theories. This
tale charms with its sheer up-frontness, and its zestful toying with
the reader. In "Klokwerk's Heart" Werner creates intricate living machines
while Gretina knits for the needy. On the surface, this is quite an
extraordinary love story, but in this author's work the everyday is
always juxtaposed with the fantastic and real magic is never far from
the surface, deepening and questioning.
Quickly, you learn to expect to be surprised and then suprised again
by these stories. "Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies" flips and flops
brom a heartfelt portrait of a writer's existence, to intense horror
and then wicked black humour. Roald Dahl: meet Anna Tambour. "The Apple"
is a beautiful vignette taking the reader right back to what it is like
to be a small child: the fears, the distorted sense of scale of what
matters and what does not, again with that dark, dark sense of fun at
play.
Anna writes about the natural world as only one with deep knowledge
and understanding can do. "The Chosen" is a wonderful parable of human
intervention in nature, as great multitudes worship the gods of unnatural
selection and assisted migration, and the strong prepare to inherit
the earth. "Valley of the Sugars of Salt" sets out as the straightforward
tale of a man, successful in business but not in marriage, retreating
to the country to grow gourmet and largely forgotten fruit. Inevitably,
the story bucks and surprises and the ground shifts drastically beneath
the reader as the orchard becomes something of a, shall we say, cooperative
venture.
Some of these stories are almost straight pieces of fiction, but the
author can never quite resist the opportunity to dig and twist, to subvert
and surprise, to confound any expectations we might foolishly have.
"The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive" is about as close to mainstream as
we get, a stunning evocation of the upheaval of a big move into retirement,
from a tough Australian farming community to an embryonic seaside idyll.
"The Rest Cure" shows that our author can do moody and disturbingly
intense, too, but always there comes that point where everything begins
to shift. And in "Call me Omniscient", well ... how many authors would
dare to tell a story from the viewpoint of a story-telling mode: the
omniscient? You just can't do this sort of thing, and it certainly shouldn't
work as well as it does in this quite ingenious and audacious story.
"Picking Blueberries" is one of my absolute favourites, a superb portrait
of an alternative community in the early 1970s, told with a child's-eye
simplicity by a young resident. There's a novel here: it really is good.
The title piece and the longest story in the book, "Monterra's Deliciosa",
is another true highlight, the story of a boy born into an Iowa farming
family who is destined for an entirely different kind of life in which
everyone makes the reckoning of what price is worth paying for the life
you want to lead.
There: you should be prepared now. Prepared to be unprepared. Be careful
in here. There is an author at play within these pages. Anna Tambour
is having fun with you and she has a wicked sense of humour.
You have been warned.
...Keith Brooke, June 2003
availability
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales by Anna
Tambour, a short story collection by Anna Tambour, with an introduction
by Keith Brooke (ISBN 1894815947). Published by Prime in 2003.
Order online using these links and infinity
plus will benefit:
...Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales, trade paperback, from
Amazon.com / from
Amazon.co.uk.
Back
to infinity plus introduces...
© Keith Brooke 2003, 2004
|
|
