The Fish Tank

Neighbourly Love

Dryad

I liked it. Cissy is a totally believable character. Someone in her position/station WOULD be totally lost; it would just be totally inconceivable to her.

mat twassel

I love the tone and style and substance of the writing. When it’s humming along on all cylinders, it reminds me of the prose of Thomas Berger, who is one of my favorite modern writers. I think the opening paragraphs are particularly fine overall

Oosh

There is a great deal to admire in this story. It is rich and dense in texture, full of allusions, making points and sparking ideas left, right and centre.

Much of Bradley’s fiction, while located in a perfectly rational universe, involves one startling incongruity, or fantastic element. I’m reminded time and again of Marcel Aymé (whose work I cannot recommend too highly). Here, of course, it’s the clash between the permissive neighbours, with their unblinking acceptance of free love, and Cissy’s unreflective, unbending insistance on traditional marital fidelity.

The central idea of the story is the clash between these two irreconcilable world-views. There are several scenes in which we witness them colliding, and I felt that these were the most vividly and effectively written: the dialogue was spotless and they carried absolute conviction. The author confronts us with the irresistible force meeting the unmovable obstacle, and it is like iron striking flint.

The ground is meticulously prepared, too. I particularly liked Cissy and Ken’s pillow-talk scene after the first meeting with the neighbours, where Ken is evasive and Cissy sure that something has gone awry. By using effective devices such as these, the author keeps us reading, searching for explanations, questioning all the time.

 We’re witnessing a clash of principles (or prejudices), and perhaps a clash of religions - a war of the gods, if you want. We’re perhaps being teased with the thought that religions are just clumps of prejudices - but teased, no more than that.

Lastly - and here I’m going beyond the FT remit as usual - I wanted to agonize a little about the way this story resolves, or doesn’t resolve.

The story ends by emphasizing that all Cissy wants is to get out of this situation. She’s an escapist at heart. She cannot negotiate, argue or in any way deal with the problem posed by her neighbours. It’s a case of shutters down.

Equally, the neighbours show absolutely no understanding of why their conduct might give Cissy the least trouble.

In a way, this stalemate was reached early on in the story. Do the subsequent developments really take the characters any further? Could the story have ended equally well after the first episode of infidelity between Peggy and Ken? What emerges thereafter, except further exasperation?

The story is deliberately open-ended, as it is entitled to be. When stories refuse to resolve, we are pointed back to the point of conflict, and made to think and re-think.

And so I find myself straying into deep waters: part of me would like Cissy to have an area of doubt, of ambiguity - perhaps even temptation.

But at the moment, Cissy is a rock, totally impermeable and inflexible. She feels annoyance, but she never ever questions. If she were turned to soap (and in my darkest moments, I might briefly entertain the thought), I wouldn’t pay extra for it.

Whether that would improve the message, or destroy it, is not for me to say.

In summary: this story is a conversation-piece, at once congenial and provocative, that raises dozens of questions.

PleaseCain

The subject matter is challenging, and even though you date the story nicely with all of the post-war touches, the topics seem relevant for the present day, at least here in the States.  I admire that.  The Roths are funny, too.

alt.fiction.original

Peace Returns

Huw Lyan Thomas

Great story, and a great ending, despite the fact that I don’t wholeheartedly agree with what I perceive as the underlying message: that drugs will fuck you up (prohibition fucks you up, IMO, but that’s a different discussion :-)

Longden

This is one gigantic cheat, really. Strict reversal, cinematic rewind as it were, makes no sense e.g. people would be talking backwards. But you pull it off extraordinarily well; with barely a hiccough (Is it ‘Hello’ or ‘Goodbye’). It does seem peculiarly appropriate for the subject matter. I think that may be because one is thinking about the crucial issue, the beginning of dissolution, the top of the slippery slope, at the right time i.e. at the end of the story. The natural or chronological order would be a very predictable story. It was neat, incidentally, that you only revealed the death near the end of the story -- no need for strict logic, or rather illogic, after all. It does or would make a great ‘message’ piece. I’m not sure if that was the intention exactly. If so there is the question of course whether people agree with the message (pace Huw). A fun idea and a deadly serious subject.

Nativelaw

This was fascinating, this story.  I just love it.   You may not care for the short story as much as the novel, as a genre, but I must say that you really do it justice.  Something about the subjects you pick and how you treat them gives your short stories a barer and more conspicuous intensity than I find in your longer works, where the same elements are present but present for such duration that they become less noticeable.  I don't know if that makes any sense.

I've read the other comments, and I just wanted to add, that I didn't take this as moralizing on the subject of drugs; for me, it did read as descriptive, rather than proscriptive; though, certainly her particular experience with drugs was not a pleasant or good one, so I know where others were coming from.

The Fish Tank

The Shoebox

Christine Indigo

Two of the conventions of the stroke story are that a) People never have any problems with other people seeing them in the nude, and b) People, like bonobo monkeys, will have sex with anyone and everyone else at the drop of a hat. I liked the way this story played with those conventions.

Conjugate

Interesting, and thought provoking.  I was waiting for something more, but I did not really feel cheated by the ending.  I was struck by the contrast between the completely neutral, unexpected act of apparent affection from a stranger (the saleswoman) and the rather mechanical response from her husband; perhaps a touch of irony.

Desdmona

You have a marvellous way of writing in a “foreign” setting that makes it all seem normal. This isn’t the first story you’ve written where I was struck with this idea. You managed the same thing in “Extracurricular Love”. I have limited experience with nudist communities, but it seems to me, as in every world, there are going to be people from all ends of the sexual spectrum. This is one of the ways you make the story’s setting seem so natural--a common theme of all communities, if you will. The real clincher to this sort of normalcy idea is that people are all the same, with or without clothes. Relationships stagger, couples diverge, and people are surprised into inaction by the acts of strangers.

I think it’s a misconception to believe that people who are exhibitionists are automatically into the darker areas of porn as someone before me hinted. I may consider myself free enough to show my body. It does not mean I want excrement liberally applied. Danielle shows a very real concern when she wonders what will come from her husband’s proclivities. I don’t get the impression that she wishes he would stop; only that she hopes it won’t include her.

The real beauty of this piece is the irony of a woman so self absorbed with her appearance that she’s missed the world around her completely. I think it’s easy to associate nudism with freedom, and yet, Danielle isn’t free of anything, except her clothes. The subtle irony is just extremely well done.

Eli the Bearded

I like the shoes binding it together. She is shopping for shoes, the shoestore clerk gives her that shocking, delicious intimacy, the porn that represents the sexual stupor of her marriage is stored in a shoebox.

The universe this has been put into is very intriguing. I like how we have to figure out the norms of it on our own.

mat twassel

Impressive!  What I think really works is the way a pedal point leaps out at the end. “... where it was expected she’d stay while Paul watched the rest of the match.”  Two steps forward, two steps back. What a funny dance the world does!

Meme Mispelt

Um, it was really unsettling.  Which is maybe not what i expect from a sex story, but for something with so little character development, this has lodged itself unexpectedly deep in my head. The contrast between Danielle’s not-quite sexual encounter and her husband losing his passion for her in extreme fetish material was startling and more than a little disturbing.

PleaseCain

An interesting story, and sad.  I like how you’ve created mood and atmosphere without bludgeoning us over the head.  To me, her vanity suggests that she has everything down pat.  Then, the young sales girl with her sweet kiss throws a spanner in the works, and it unravels from there: her composure, her cold home, and her dissipated relationship.  I got all that out of your story, which was much more interesting than my summary here.

Tesseract

Most nude society stories are also a sexually free society. Danielle seems to approach it differently. She is not ‘naked’ but dressed in the latest fashion. I noticed how very aware she is of her looks, that she still has ‘it’. And that other women’s pubic hair, not as a sexual signal, but as a fashion faux pas.

She is not a sexual creature so she is quite thrown by the fleeting sexual advance of the shoe clerk. She can talk the talk, but not walk the walk.