There is a fresh post up on Deep Kyoto this evening on the very lovely cafe Yamatoya. This will probably be my last posting on Deep Kyoto this year as I doubt I’ll have time for any more articles before Friday.

For it is official! This Friday I fly back to England, through the usual 24 hour time-warp, stopping first at my sister’s place in Birmingham and then on the 20th going up to sunny Middlesbrough (in time for my father’s 90th – yes he really is that old). I’ll be a week there before going back down to Birmingham, having a wee breather and then hopping on the plane back to Japan on the 29th (and of course losing a day going through the time-warp backwards). How I shall celebrate おみそか is as yet undecided. But unless any kind local readers wish to invite me out to wild and crazy New Year’s Eve parties I imagine I’ll be in S.T.T.

Now, I have just finished this year’s Best American Short Stories, and am now looking back over the list of contents collecting my thoughts. I found last year’s collection incredibly lack-lustre, but noting that this year’s guest editor was Stephen King and that he promised in the blurb that each and every story would be “kick-ass” I gave this year’s a chance. Stephen King is a man who understands what makes a story tick, I thought. He knows that the bottom line is entertainment. I can trust him when he says “kick-ass” to deliver “kick-ass”.

I was disappointed. Looking back over the contents as I am, I think over half these stories are forgettable and there are three in there that make me want to kick the writers’ asses very hard indeed. I’d say there are about seven stories in there that are worth your time and money but only two that really stand out; the hilarious “Bris” by Eileen Pollack and the wonderful “Wake” by Beverly Jensen. The latter in particular had me hooked from the get-go with this unforgettable opener:

Boston, January 1956
“Good God Almighty. We’ve lost the damned body.” Avis stood on the North Station train platform, her small leather suitcase pressed between her knees as though it too, might be whisked away. “Dalton, we’ve lost Dad. What the hell are we going to do?”

Now tell me you don’t want to know what happens next. So, what I would suggest is not buying this collection at all, but just keeping your eyes peeled for work by Pollack and Jensen and buying that instead. I believe Pollack will have a short story collection coming out soon. Sadly, however,  you may have to wait a while for more of Jensen’s work to appear. Apparently, she was working on a series of interellated stories based on her own family history for a number of years but never sought to publish them and then she passed away in 2003. “Wake” is the very first piece to be published. Well, if “Wake” is representative I do hope somebody sees fit to getting them into print because I would love to read that.