True North- Selected Stories by Sara Maitland

I’ve been a great fan of Sara Maitland’s writing over the years, so was thrilled to discover that Manchester’s Comma Press have just published True North, a selection of  short stories written over her impressive 40 year career. It’s a wide-ranging collection, including reworking of fairy tales, classical myths and historical moments often from a feminist perspective. Several explore twin and sibling relationships, where we can see a deeper preoccupation with balance and harmony beneath the surface. She’s an acute observer of the natural world in some heart-stoppingly beautiful lyrical passages, yet gives a sharp and witty portrayal of human interaction and relationships in others. And my favourites are when those stories grounded in a quotidian reality morph into something rather unexpected and definitely surreal.

Hansel and Gretel takes place many years after the two little children gaunt with hunger, glazed with grief, are lost in the forest. Here, they’re twins who now, as adults, live near one another and Hansel is regularly drawn to visit his sister who lives alone. Gretel confesses to him one day her guilt at killing the witch and wonders if the whole story about Hansel imprisoned in the cage even happened, if any of it happened, it was all so long ago. She herself puts out sweeties for the little children who come past her house and hope they won’t push her in the oven. In Rapunzel Revisited we see our heroine many years after her confinement in the tower. She’s enjoyed her time at court, but now as an older woman returns to the tower to get some peace and quiet. She describes the expansive view from each window, so it’s hardly a prison, more like being on top of the world, and she even has a new witch to look after her now, bouncing up the ladder with youthful enthusiasm, radiant good health and a mild excess of jollity. And the silly young thing calls herself a health visitor!

Witches are often a presence in these stories and in Moss Witch we learn that they’re found in places where ancient woodland is caressed by at least two hundred wet days a year. The Moss Witch is a sort of guardian and expert on 154 moss species in all their variety: great swathes of sphagnum on open moors; little frolicsome tufts on old slate roofs and walls, surprising mounds flourishing on corrugated asbestos, low-lying velvet on little-used tarmac roads, and weary, bullied, raked and poisoned carpets fighting for their lives on damp lawns. Of course, there’s the historical fact that women deemed to be witches were burned to death, but in The Swans we have the silent princess saved on the pyre by her brothers transformed from swans when they catch her embroidered shirts in their beaks.

Those brothers, those siblings, feature in several stories. In some cases it’s the helpfulness of a brother as in The Swans, or the friendly familiar banter between siblings in Her Bonxie Boy. But in others it’s the relationship between identical twins that’s centre stage. In A Fall From Grace, the acrobats leave French circuses in their droves to work on Eiffel’s new tower in Paris. They, of all people, knew in the marrow of their bones and the tissue of their muscles the precise tension—that seven million threaded rods, and two and a half million bolts could, of course, hold fifteen thousand steel girders in perfect balance.  Identical twins Eva and Louise as girls aren’t allowed to work on the tower, so they dance in the nightclubs of Montmartre instead, meeting the rich Countess, shifting their bodies for balance in her carriage as they do on the tightrope, finding harmony when they do finally scale the tower, drunken and reckless. In The Beautiful Equation David returns home after their mother’s death to look after his identical twin brother, Derek, who has Asperger’s syndrome. He’s mystified and irritated when Derek starts writing the same mathematical equation all over the house. When Derek explains that the equation represents positive and negative forces, and reflects their sibling relationship, a punch up ensues. Neither man is ever seen again.

Her Bonxie Boy is one of the stories with a realistic, relatable protagonist that morphs into the surreal later on.  Helen is an internationally recognised ornithologist who’s returning to the Scottish Island of Allt na Croite in the early spring to continue researching the effects of wind turbines on different bird species. Her particular focus is on skuas, the big thuggish ones with the heavy beaks and barrel-chests. There’s some wonderful description of bird life, landscape and seasonal change as she heads north. She’s also looking forward to some solitude, treasured by many women in this collection, though we know from a joshing phone call with her brother, she’s got a love interest up there whom she’s keen to get back to.

Why I Became a Plumber is also grounded in the banality of everyday events. The protagonist is given a garden with a little house attached as a silver wedding anniversary present, only to discover it’s a retirement present too: she’s being retired as a wife by her husband who’s found a younger model. She keeps hearing a slight sibilant noise coming from the loo and realises she’s got to sort it out by herself now, having relied on her husband throughout her married life. Amidst lots of word play on flushing—her menopausal, the loo’s technical—she discovers the unexpected explanation for that noise. And resolves to capitalise on her new knowledge by becoming a plumber.

Now, I’ve sadly no time to go into detail here on the historical stories, An Edwardian Tableau, The Pardon List, or indeed the reworking of the classical story of Andromeda. Suffice to say that running through these three is a tremendous and breathtaking thread of women’s rage. Their rage at being put down, controlled and belittled by men. And a sort of celebration of their anger when they physically act out that anger, rampaging through their environment and discovering their power. And I am saying their here but actually I want to say our, because the strength of feeling in these stories got right under my skin and I was right there with them.

This is a great collection, really showcasing Sara Maitland’s considerable story telling skills, her careful plotting and pacing, the originality in her reworking of old stories, the fresh imaginativeness of her new tales. If you love short stories, this collection is for you. Thanks to Comma Press, experts in the short form, for bringing these to us and for my review copy.