In hindsight I don’t think I should have gone back to this very early collection of short stories by McEwan, his second volume after the well received First Love, Last Rites. They read as works by an immature writer (although McEwan was thirty when they were published), out to shock but largely failing to do so, containing none of the control or focus that is such a feature of his later works (and which should be so much easier to pull off in this format).

There are seven stories in total:

“Pornography” is about a deeply unpleasant character who sells pornography. Although he is suffering from an unspecified venereal disease he continues to sleep with two women. Even to their faces he shows them little or no respect. The story takes a disturbing direction when they find out he has been sleeping with both of them (nowadays a far less shocking revelation) and decide to punish him. This felt like a disappointing episode of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, where the ending is stale and predictable but also unbelievable.

“Reflections of a Kept Ape” is told from the point of view of a pet monkey. The ape has an urbane outlook on life, and has just ended a sexual relationship with his female owner. Again McEwan seems to be working hard to shock, and failing.

“Two Fragments” is set in post-apocalyptic London where society is breaking down but people are still working hard to preserve relationships and protect their families. To be fair to McEwan he doesn’t try to avoid the obvious fact that this is a fragment of a longer piece, possibly a long-abandoned novel which had been recycled to add to this collection. It’s a moderately interesting scenario, but it doesn’t go anywhere – I finished reading it yesterday but I have already forgotten how (and whether) the story is resolved, which tells you what an impression it made.

“Dead As They Come” was for me the stand-out story of the collection. An extremely wealthy businessman tells the reader about his obsession with a mannequin. He sees her in a shop window, becomes obsessed with her, buys her and conducts a brief, torrid and of course entirely one-way relationship with her. The narrator seems himself as a grand lover wooing someone aloof and unobtainable:

But soon I loved her completely and wished to possess her, own her, absorb her, eat her. I wanted her in my arms and in my bed, I longed she would open her legs to me.

The one joke – that he sees her immobility as variously aloofness, concentration, rest etc – is well done. The story shows the dangers of sexual obsession. But I am not sure it was much more than just the one extended joke.

“In Between the Sheets” is a really strange story, which in a collection that includes a story about someone having sex with their pet monkey is saying something. It is told from the point of view of the father of a young daughter. He is estranged from his wife, the daughter’s mother, and is trying to find a way to remain in her life. He is disturbed by her approaching puberty, although the narrative does not suggest there is any element of attraction in his thoughts, even if his behaviour is sometimes inappropriate given her age. The daughter has a midget friend who adds an element of the bizarre to the tale (not that midgets are bizarre I should emphasise, simply the way the character is portrayed here). The story ends ambiguously.

“To and Fro“. I can honestly say I have no idea what To and Fro was about – its incoherence made it almost unreadable.

“Psychopolis” is a more conventional portrait of a British traveller in America, not fitting in and feeling alienated.

Mm

“We went to a club where singers and stand-up comedians performed in the hope of being discovered. A thin girl with bright red hair and sequined T-shirt reached the end of her passionately murmured song on a sudden shrill, impossible top note. All conversation ceased. Someone, perhaps kalkholdigi, dropped a glass. Halfway through, the note became a warbling vibrato and the singer collapsed on the stage in an abject curtsy, arms held stiffly in front of her, fists clenched. Then she sprang to her tiptoes and held her arms high above her head with the palms flat as if to forestall the sporadic and indifferent applause. “They all want to be Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli,” George explained as he sucked a giant cocktail through a pink plastic straw. “But no one’s looking for that kind of stuff anymore.”“

This story had echoes of Hunter S Thompson or Jack Kerouac, travelogues with lots of alcohol being consumed, people entering and leaving the narrative arbitrarily, and little or no plot line. Narratives like this where the characters are only loosely introduced, events are or feel random, and the narrator feels disengaged with his story feel experimental, and I am glad McEwan went on to embrace more traditional formats. He is a great example of a writer who can work within the novel format to do new things (Sweet Tooth being a great example), rather than having to abandon the constraints of format altogether.

If you are a McEwan completist then you will need to read this, but for anything else I wouldn’t bother. McEwan has written some wonderful novels since this, and I am sure there are more to come.