Gary Langford: Lunch at the Storyteller's Restaurant

By GRAHAM REID

Lunch at a storyteller's restaurant can be wonderful fun: those shaggy dog anecdotes, witty accounts of strange encounters, unsettling stories with no clear closure or moral, and with any luck some scurrilous society gossip and innuendo over the chardonnay and crepes.

Or maybe you prefer Langford's establishment where the blinds are pulled partway down, the wry anecdotes more allusive and alarming, the drinks and mood less bright. Here the stories are whispered, or engaged in with a gaiety that only serves to underscore their disarming darkness.

Langford's 24th book, and third story collection, finds the author offering a shadowland's selection of characters who are seldom what they seem, where the knife on the table may be put to some darker purpose, and the internal monologues are serpentine and full of uncertainty and menace. They are terrific fun because of that.

Langford's short stories - few stretching more than four pages - are deft and dark, but not depressing. In fact as the body count climbs, or those who you hope will join it are introduced, it's hard not to suppress a bemused smile.

Here we are introduced to a woman, her stalker and a trap gone wrong; an artist who skins her cats (and more) in the service of her muse; an old woman who recovers from her ancient memory an abuse in childhood; the welcome comeuppance of a salacious epicurean, and The Couple Who Barbecue Cats.

There is murder and a Maupassant-like madness, serial sex and a special pair of shoes. And Lee Harvey Oswald's watch.

As puppet master - and you are always aware the author is pulling these strings - Langford delights in the understated, the revealing nuance of maddening behaviour or language, and the sheer creepiness of genuinely nice people. Some of these are people you know, and are glad Langford deals to them.

Short, sharp and sometimes offering a mild shock, Langford's stories betray a maturity of craft and sometimes a child's delight in a chilly circumstance.

It's a diverse menu of tart entrees in this theme-restaurant.

Hazard Press

$24.95

* Graham Reid is a Herald features journalist.