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132 pages

English

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The Truth in Fiction is a collection of eighteen short stories written and collated over the last ten years. Many of them are stories written about the streets of London, the cities of Europe and locations as far afield as the mountains around Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand. Some of these stories are narrated by the central character, whereby we listen to his or her appreciation of events, and the remainder are told in the third person, where the reader is invited to draw his or her own conclusions from the tale. In 'A Prodigious Epiphany for Padraig', written in Santiago de Compostela at the end of walking the Camino de Santiago, we meet Padraig O'Rahilly as he passes the evening enjoying the fiesta of the literary heroes of Galicia and during which he confesses to his young guide the motivations for his pilgrimage to the city. In 'Geneva', a young UNHCR lawyer, waiting for his flight to be called, is approached by a timid Iranian refugee, who asks the lawyer to record in a journal the strange tale of how he has come to be in the city. Finally, 'I Know' tells the story of two women who meet for the first time at a wake and come to realise they both knew the recently departed rather better than many of those who have come to pay their respects. The topics of each story vary between those of love and loss, coincidence, taking gentle pokes at social prejudice and how it is that the harsher lessons of life are often those most valuable... The Truth in Fiction will appeal to fans of short stories, and those who enjoy travelling.

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Short story

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 octobre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785894107
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE Truth in Fiction

A Collection of Short Stories

Peter Crawley
Copyright © 2016 Peter Crawley

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination
or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 978 1785894 107

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Emma From the Mountains of the Moon to the Sea of Marmara, ‘cross the shifting sands of Sinai, by the Gulf of Aqaba, a young woman pauses in the shade of an Acacia and recalls the many strangers who have shown her kindness.
The first person: The views and attitudes expressed in these short stories are in no way to be confused with those of the author, even and especially when written in the first person. They are merely the voices and views of the fictional characters as featured in each story.
Contents
Preface
Two Books
I Know
A Propitious Epiphany for Padraig
A Shot in the Arm
Puddaciari
I See Him Coming
Maurice and Mike
The Longcase
Geneva
Nine
Trust
A Mixed Bag
By Accident
Gone
The Backs of the Leaves
Le Plan
The Getaway
Landfall
Two Books
I Know
A Propitious Epiphany for Padraig
A Shot in the Arm
Puddaciari
I See Him Coming
Maurice and Mike
The Longcase
Geneva
Nine
Trust
A Mixed Bag
By Accident
Gone
The Backs of the Leaves
Le Plan
The Getaway
Landfall
About the Author
Mazzeri
Boarding House Reach
Ontreto
Preface
A couple or three years ago my niece flew over from San Francisco to go interrailing around Europe. She and her two companions enjoyed a few weeks bathing in history, absorbing culture and sampling the local alcoholic beverages of each city they passed through. Why wouldn’t they? At eighteen, back home in the States, they could do just about anything they wanted – join the army, carry a firearm, drive a car and smoke pot, though apparently not all at the same time. Actually, I’m not sure that isn’t feasible, but let’s not mix polemics with possibility and percentage. However, back home neither my niece nor her friends could enjoy the simple pleasures of conversation over a glass of wine until they turned twenty-one, so this was probably where Europe edged it over home as a suitable venue for exploring the attendant consequences of liquid refreshment. Before flying back, and to keep her out of mischief on the long flight, I gave her a book of short stories by Hemingway .
Recently, my niece came by again to check in with friends and relations, and I asked her if she had read many or any of Hemingway’s stories. She bridled a little and moaned that she’d spent too many hours being lectured by her college English professor on the merits of short story writing: how each line had to possess its own weight and significance relative to the story, and how she was supposed to read what was going on between the lines and not just the lines as they sat on the page. In being spoon-fed, or rather force-fed, all this mumbo-jumbo she had lost her appetite for the genre. Surely the fundamental reason for reading short stories, she argued, was simply to enjoy them, not necessarily to anaesthetize them, dissect them and work out how they are constructed. “The idea,” she concluded, “is to appreciate the beauty of the animal, not tear it to pieces simply to find out what makes it breathe.”
My niece has a point.
Many great authors have waxed long and lyrically about how to write short stories. Some quote specific rules that must be adhered to, but then hurry right along to praise those writers brave enough to disregard them. From a purely personal perspective, I like to think each short story possesses its own very individual form, and to suggest there is a formula that must be applied to the writing of a short story is to suggest that one only has to queue up at the factory door in order to collect one. This is, in my experience, not the case: we all think differently, which is why we all enjoy a variety of tales.
In medieval times, a wandering minstrel would earn his board and lodging by entertaining his hosts with the union of his voice and his lyre. The Scéalaì of Ireland earn theirs in much the same fashion, but without any musical accompaniment; they simply tell stories. Their rule is that there is no story to be told unless there is a person to listen to it in the first place. I like the simplicity in this logic; it is the reason why we write stories.
In The Truth in Fiction I have assembled a collection of some of the short stories I have written over the last ten years. Some are written in the first person, which permits the reader to assume the identity of the narrator, thus reading the story and appreciating what goes on through his or her eyes: others are written in the third person, which permits the reader to appreciate what goes on from a distance and therefore to interpret the events as he or she sees fit. However, if truth is the main ingredient, then fiction is the flavour conjured by the author.
In the Appendix, I have tried to pass on the origins of these stories; where they were born, if you like, why they were written and the contributions of the many people without whom this collection would not have made it into print.
Finally, I must thank Pete Darby for the time, care and imagination he put in to the extraordinary cover image of The Truth In Fiction. He is without doubt a gifted artist and worthy of recognition.
Two Books
South Island, New Zealand
It must be just after ten, for down the lane and around the corner the Lady of the Lake has slipped her moorings and is, in her customary and curiously unladylike manner, smothering the town with the acrid effluvium of her morning’s exertions.
“Excuse me,” the girl asks.
He’d noticed her, sitting there reading, whilst deciding on a table. There had been other tables free, as most of the tourists were down at the quay watching the old Lady belch her way out from the Queenstown dock into the opalescent waters of the lake, but at first glance he’d thought her pretty, so he’d taken the table next to her.
“Sure,” he replies, turning to face her, “how can I help?”
“The Earnslaw. The TSS Earnslaw. I mean I know that SS stands for Steam Ship, but what does the T stand for? The?”
She has strawberry-blond hair, tied back, and a lean face which is frowning in query. Her straight nose extends in one uninterrupted slope down from her high forehead and her eyes are grey; grey like the morning light on cloud before the sun creeps over the horizon.
He doesn’t reckon her for the hardier variety of backpacker: not for her the all-weather jacket and pants and mud-encrusted boots. And yet she sports a light-blue hybrid jacket and cross-trainers, so maybe she is one of the new breed of designer backpackers he’s grown accustomed to seeing about the town. It is, after all, summer.
“Screw,” he replies. “The first S stands for Screw and the second for Steamship. The T stands for Twin; Twin-Screw Steamship, hence TSS.”
For a moment her frown deepens as she debates whether he is being either clever or vulgar, or both. But when she’s made up her mind that he is being straight with her, her face colours a little and she looks back down at her book.
“What that means is,” he explains, vaguely amused at her discomfort, “she has two propellers, one on either side.”
After a pause, she says, “Smelly old thing, isn’t she?”
The girl is British.
“Yes, she burns a lot of coal. Launched the same year as the Titanic sank.”
“Which was?” she asks, looking up, challenging him.
“1912.”
“So it was,” she replies, her slightly cocky, confident smile suggesting she’d been ready to correct him if he’d got the date wrong. She buries her head back in her book. “Where does she go? I mean, on the lake. Up or down?” she asks, without looking up.
He likes it that she doesn’t seem backward in coming forward with her questions. “Across,” he replies. “She crosses the lake to Walter Peak.”
“Worth the trip, is it? Walter Peak?” This time she does look up.
“Gardens will be at their best and you’ll definitely lower the average age at the lunch, but you’ll be a captive audience for nearly four hours and the lake can chop up a bit in the afternoon.”
“Mmm. Thanks, might duck that one then.” She pauses, studying him, not in any critical way, more in the sense that she is trying to place him.
When she’s reached some agreeable decision about him, she closes her book, sets it on the small round table and sits up.
“There’s just too much to do here,” she states, “I’m alm