Another One To Watch

I'd heard any number of good things about Amanda Lee Koe's short story collection Ministry of Moral Panic and it turns out they're all true. This I discovered on Tuesday, in the course of enjoying the public holiday for Deepavali, when I read the book cover to cover (having just finished Art Studio in the morning) in the process adding considerably to my enjoyment of the day. I couldn't put it down - not so much wanting to know what was going to happen next, though one or two tales had their fair share of that useful quality, as wanting to see what the writer was going to do next in terms of voice, perspective, point of view - all that tricky stuff about technique that is so irritatingly self-conscious when it gets in the way, but fascinating and somehow necessary when it's done with assurance. Ms Lee (I originally wrote Ms Koe, but I've got a feeling that could be wrong) has assurance in bagfuls. There's hardly a false, forced note in the collection, which is quite something considering just how technically adventurous she is.

Earlier today I glanced through the stories again feeling that I'd read them in such a rush that I'd better remind myself of the shape of the whole volume before writing anything about it and I was struck by both the cohesion of the whole and just how strikingly successful the best stories are. The exploration of taboos that seems to work as a linking principle is rightly unsettling at moments, but I came to trust the writer in terms of her purposes even when I wasn't entirely sure of what ends she had in mind. (I'm thinking specifically of Chick, of which the ending, surely crucial to an interpretation, lost me. Was I meant to be in any way sympathetic to the protagonist? I hope not, because I wasn't.)

Most of all I was impressed by the emotional wallop of so many of the stories. I sort of half-wondered before I started reading (don't know why, foolish prejudice against the young I guess) whether I was in for some post-modern ironic cool. Well, there is a distancing at times, but well-judged and one that adds to the sense of intelligent compassion at work. The placing of Love Is No Big Truth at the heart of things with the sort of two part Two Ways To Do This either side, these pieces featuring the most obviously victimised of the many victims we encounter, surely wasn't an accident? (Yes, they were the favourites of this old softy. But four of the other stories were close behind.)

For someone as talented as this writer I'd imagine that cleverness is a big temptation. Fortunately she doesn't succumb.