Having made his name as a novelist of two acclaimed novels, Alistair Mackay’s debut collection of short stories, The Lucky Ones, presents a range of voices and stories that provide compelling reads.
The first story in the collection, Fever Tree is one of the most powerful explorations of grief I have read recently. Jeremy has lost his partner, David. As the story opens, he’s just come from an appointment with his doctor. He has said there was nothing wrong with Jeremy’s heart, but it’s still yammering painfully in his chest.
Jeremy writes listicles and other items for a living, and a few of the guys where he works suggest he join them for drinks that night. He goes to a yoga class instead, before deciding to join them. There is no way of making things right, though, no matter what occurs that evening, grief will take its time. In one passage, Jeremy tries to read, but the pain begins in his chest again and as he tries to decipher the words, he finds that “he’d lost the ability to read. His eyes moved back and forth over the lines, but the words had no meaning. They were shapes in ink, symbols from some forgotten civilisation.” How perfectly this story inhabits the country of grief, where sounds move in and out, and where words cannot be read.
Grief is also at the centre of the excellent The King of the Jungle. In it we are witness to Nombulelo’s poverty and grief as she wakes from a “dreamless black sleep” hearing the laughter from little girls outside her shack. She wakes tired, but her years aren’t the cause of her fatigue, we will learn. At the foot of her bed, we are shown Thembi’s crate filled with dolls, crayons and a grubby soft tiger toy.
Across town Gary can’t sleep, rolling away from Mike to check his Twitter feed on his phone: #MandelaDay is already trending. Gary and his team at work will be “joining the conversation” and contributing to the good deeds of the day, along with muscling some of the company’s branding into those good deeds. They will be painting the wall of a school in a township. Gary and Nombulelo will not meet across the vast divides of their lives, though their worlds will collide briefly. Only as readers do our impressions roam across both of their stories, and the denouement is heartbreaking.
Meanwhile, Boy Meets Boy introduces us to Carl and Tom who marry on a cliff overlooking the ocean. They marry despite a previous break-up, and Tom feeling that Carl’s company leaves him feeling “quietly sad”. But this isn’t really about Carl and Tom, though it is about the realities of relationships. It’s also about Jack, a man Carl dated briefly during their break-up. It is about the marks that previous relationships leave on us, and is achingly beautiful.
The Covid-19 pandemic raises its head in a meditative story, Kingdom of Prophets. An unnamed narrator reflects on the breathless voice of his mother on the phone, on what we humans have done to the planet, and whether there will be other pandemics. This is a story suffused with the beauties of the natural world, but there’s a pandemic raging, other peoples’ breath is dangerous, and it only takes a single phone call to turn someone’s world upside down.
Emigration is another theme that runs through several of the stories. How the past rears up to surprise you is part of the shock of Going Home. Other stories are less rooted in today’s reality. In Young People Problems the young people of a future time are in charge now, as the older ones have ruined the earth. In The Witch, Hanret is running away from violence, making her way in the soft forest. There are a wide variety of voices in these stories, and that contributes to the vibrant, assured collection of stories.
Stephen Symons is well-known as an accomplished poet of many poetry collections, and Of Salt, Dust & Love is his debut collection of short fiction.
The story that opens this book, Rickus and Dries, is set in the small sun-baked town of Sonfontein. At loose ends over the summer school holiday, the two young friends get up to all sorts of mischief. One of these escapes includes going to find San paintings on a farm, and making off with a knife they find there. They know they shouldn’t have done that and something strange happens: a mysterious burn appears overnight on Rickus and won’t go away. This story is saturated in small town life, which is vividly detailed. The taking of the knife is a rite of passage of sorts for Rickus and Dries, and the story moves forward to a relief-filled conclusion.
I loved The Memorist, set in a time in which you can insert a pill behind your ear and go back to your past. Mark wants to go back in time to a day on a beach in Durban in 1981. The capsule must remain attached to your ear, and you must make no attempt to remove it. The appeal of this intriguing story lies in the fascination we all have with returning to the past, perhaps to change events. And what happens then? How does this affect the future?
The Buzzard is an astonishing story set in the damaged European landscapes of World War 1. We’re in the mind of a German soldier in the trenches, used now to the “alphabet of mud. Mud that corrupted every surface. Mud that caked the ribs of the dead.” Meanwhile across the trenches is a Private Henry Tandey, tired of life, the damp deep in his bones. The two men will meet in a destroyed village, and what occurs in that field will reverberate across the 20th century.
War is also at the heart of The River, centred on a Russian soldier, Mikhail. He captures a Ukrainian soldier. The story turns on an irony, but also cleverly shines a light on the human face behind a soldier’s façade.
The Interview takes the shape of an interview with an older poet, and is inventively written in the form of a poem. The infinitely pliable genre of a short story lends itself to all sorts of experimentation and this works marvellously in this one.
Memorable, too, is Red Dust, a story set in a very near future SA of chaos, the president shot on June 16 2025. Chaos follows and by Christmas civil mayhem has gripped the country. A farmer, Johan, says goodbye to his wife, Hester, as she packs the children into a bakkie, taking the last of the spare cash, a .38 and a box of cartridges. She is heading to Cape Town. The story follows both her journey and Johan’s. This story, too, turns on a twist of fate and is a chilling reminder of the role of chance in our lives.
In other stories a father dies peacefully at the end of a long life, surfers take to the ocean in a burst of enthusiasm, and the experiences of a chair are foregrounded. This collection also offers a variety of voices, and an array of different experiences in skilful and assured ways.
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