TAKING PICTURES
By Anne Enright
Jonathan Cape, $36.99
Man Booker Prize-winner Anne Enright has quickly followed up the success of The Gathering with this collection of 19 short stories. In tales of brooding intensity, she focuses on women and their bodies. It is their bodies that transfix her; bodies
that reproduce, dwindle, couple and die.
Enright has impressed by her ability to gaze fixedly at the pain of living and to find humour in that struggle. She does not disappoint here.
One of the finest stories is Honey, in which a female Irish executive is offered the chance of a conference in Killarney. Her boss is a stud, her mother dying of cancer. Almost inevitable sex is thwarted by a swarm of bees. This story is key to the collection. No experience is as simple as it seems. In Shaft, a pregnant woman is trapped in a faulty lift with a tactile American. He is fascinated by her body, she feels disquieted. Yet a strange spiritual uplift ensues from this potentially sordid encounter.
As a whole, the collection is not easy. There is a lot of mental detective work to be done at the start of each tale. But the effort is repaid. There is a poignant sharpness to these stories. A deeply rewarding read.
