Book review: For better or worse, we tend to expect collections of short-form fiction to hang together in the same stylistic neighbourhood. Prepare to be surprised, then, by Kirsty Gunn’s Pretty Ugly. This is a book of juxtapositions, stylistic experimentation, cross-genres. Perhaps hinted at by the beautiful oxymoron of a title, a romance character goes meta, realism becomes thriller-esque, historical morphs into experimental. Gunn’s remarkable achievement here is that these 13 stories coexist and speak to each other across traditional divides – something we need to be aware of more than ever these days.
Pretty Ugly is the inaugural book in a new series of single-author short fiction collections from Otago University Press’s Landfall/Tauraka – a great initiative, especially as the short story has often been relegated to the margins of fiction marketing (and therefore reading), yet the form is a pillar of Aotearoa literature. Think Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson, JC Sturm, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace and recently Airini Beautrais to name a few. So it is delightful that Gunn, poetic excavator of the heart, of the human foible, is the first cab off the rank for the series.
The element of surprise is nothing new for Gunn. Each book has been a departure, from the exquisitely imagistic debut novella Rain to the daring stream-of-consciousness The Big Music to the emotionally charged short story collection Infidelities. She is ceaselessly moving, exploring, reshaping. The contrasts in Pretty Ugly are reminiscent of George Saunders’ dystopias among beds of realism.
In opening story Blood Knowledge a romance writer living a seemingly perfect life has a dark secret. Her narration is presented without irony, “her long fingers bright with gems and rings”, and the form apparently formulaic, yet Gunn gradually disrupts from within while keeping in style: “That dark mouth of hers, wide open in the mirror, letting out the secrets, telling another kind of story that had already been laid down.”
In Wairarapa a 1950s woman bringing up her 10 grandchildren while their mothers are “at the races” is beset by a mysterious interloper child. Gunn devastatingly unpacks Pākehā ideals of dynasty, belonging and, of course, wealth in a historical story that devolves/evolves into the psychological: “Because if only one could come into the ‘estate entire’, then of course the sisters would undo their own blood ties to make it come good for all three of them in the end. It’s what family did, didn’t it? Tell stories? Make sure things would turn out ok? And so by now you might really believe the sisters had never been related … "
Like Katherine Mansfield – whom she has written about, particularly in her 2014 book Thorndon – UK-based Gunn frequents a nostalgic/critical gaze back at a Pākehā childhood. This will be important to an Aotearoa reader. Perhaps the most unifying and relevant aspect of Gunn’s oeuvre, and on display in Pretty Ugly, is a complex – loving/critiquing – exploration of whiteness and class.
Place in Pretty Ugly shifts between Aotearoa and the UK – Wairarapa, King Country, the Scottish Highlands. In the end, I wanted some indicator of why the settings are hemispheres apart, aside from Gunn’s own associations. Nevertheless, descriptions of land are compelling, such as this from Poor Beasts about the destruction of Highlands land rights at the hands of rich barons: “I stood at the kitchen window then and watched the sun rise from behind the hills, everything brightening, second by second, a kind of photo coming into print, bleaching out all the dark and gradually showing outlines, shapes.”
There is the magnificent, mercurial The Round Pool in which a man revisits a fishing place to find it gated: “How all that he’d loved in his life had somehow been attached to that thought, to that line, to that part of the water.”
One of her famous strengths is her use of imagery in lovely, sonorous and metaphorical ways to reveal emotion, and that quality is all through the collection. In Mam’s Tables, a foster child’s situation is shown through “a bit of knitting”, a dining table “like a raft”.
Not every story hits its mark. Praxis, or Why Joan Collins is Important seems to reach too far, and All Gone does not quite pull off its thrillerish developments.
Although Pretty Ugly throws its net wide stylistically, there are links to be found: emblems like gardens, animals, characters who pop up here and there and, crucially, characters writing about writing. “I will write about this, though …” (Poor Beasts). Does it give too much away to explain how the meta thing functions here? I was reminded of Atonement in which the narrator is revealed to “a writer”. You’ll need to read the book for more. I highly recommend you do. l
