Sue McCauley: Life On Earth

Reviewed by GORDON MCLAUCHLAN

Two qualities put Sue McCauley's signature on her short stories: close observation of people and the scenes she sets them in, and the ability to prise out of characters those sparkling little insights that are both individual and universal, among New Zealanders anyway.

Many of the 21 stories in this collection are vignettes that expose the fragility of relationships and how they often hold together simply because there seems no way out, with one partner sometimes wishing even death on the other. Well, not really. More idle thinking than criminal intent.

The best stories are those that deal with themes of some weight and in which things happen - in which people create events or are swept up in them: On TV, funny and charming; Fame, about what the stress of sudden fame by association does to people and how capricious their responses can be; Cowboys, an acute look at men who regard violence against women as a right, and women who allow it to happen. There are other stories on large issues.

That's not to say musing on small things cannot resonate with charm. The first story, Footnotes, with its adroit cutaway from one place to another, is a brief but beautiful look at buying a bed, in which the author balances the release from intimacy and responsibility of travel against the easy companionship of two long-time partners sleeping together. This is a fine little story which invites readers into this collection and heightens their anticipation.

But too many of the following tales are below the level readers know this proven writer of fiction can achieve. The problem is that they fit in a familiar groove occupied by so many New Zealand stories which track the ordinariness of life in merciless detail without ever discovering and illuminating anything of importance about life or living. They make too much of too little. The ordinary descends through endless internalising to the banal. Dare I say that it has become a besetting sin of women writers in this country? Their great strength is insight, the ability to look into how people feel and to prise out motive for their actions, but ruminating on and on about small events renders some stories inert.

There aren't many bad stories in this collection. The most egregious examples to me are: Jen's Room, with a character constantly talking to herself with merciless detail on a theme that's been done to death; Satan.com, with a character who invites no sympathy at all because you feel no one could be this stupid; and Slant Six - a nothing story of a woman overwhelmed by a bore and which ends inscrutably.

If this judgment is too hard it's born of disappointment. McCauley, as she demonstrates often enough here, is so good at the top of her form, she should be prevailed upon to wait until she can assemble an evenly strong collection that will give us the pleasure, and the emotional and intellectual satisfaction we have come to expect from her.

Random House $26.95

* Sue McCauley will be a guest at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, May 16-18; Gordon McLauchlan is a Herald columnist.