I finished Short Story September with one fictional collection – Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh – and one essay collection – Over the Water: Essays on Islands by various authors.

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

True to form, Moshfegh delivers 14 stories that are weird, gross and revealing of our most basic selves.

The opening story, Bettering Myself, was a stand-out. Told from the perspective of a woman teaching at a strict Catholic school. The people she works with seem oblivious to the fact that she spends most of her time inebriated. If her students know, they don’t let on, instead enjoying her loose classes –

…my seniors were all very respectful. I was in charge of preparing them for the SAT. They came to me with legitimate questions about math and vocabulary, which I had a hard time answering. A few times in calculus, I admitted defeat and spent the hour jabbering on about my life.
“Most people have had anal sex,” I told them. “Don’t look so surprised.”

Obviously her personal life is as messy as her professional life, but the ending is surprising and funny.

Most of Moshfegh’s characters are lonely and looking for connection. Some of the things they do to find connection are dangerous, or creepy, or just plain sad, and for this reason I felt a bit uncomfortable the whole time I was reading this book. I guess there’s great skill in that (making the reader feel uncomfortable, that is).

3/5

Over the Water: Essays on Islands by Various authors

I’ll admit it! I was completely seduced by the cover of this lovely collection. And of course the fact that it’s all about water.

Thirteen writers tell their stories about islands – from sun-soaked stories such as Octavia Bright’s memories of a holiday in Tuscany to the less expected – Megan Nolan’s account of dating in Manhattan and K Patrick’s description of their ferry ride from the Isle of Skye to the Isle of Lewis.

My favourite was by British author, Noreen Masud’s, account of visiting Tasmania and wanting to see a platypus. Platypus are notoriously shy and difficult to spot in the wild. I love Masud’s opening description –

A duck-billed platypus is as good as everyone says. It’s better. Its dense flat wet body looks like a sponge you could scrub with; a Beanie Baby you could flop from hand to hand; a bundle you could keep in your pocket and squeeze in your fist, hard… Its feet are delightful afterthoughts. The tail is a robust handle.

If you’ve seen a platypus, you’ll know that this is perfection. Anyway, Masud is visiting Tasmania for a conference. She’s jet-lagged, has little time, and is under-prepared for Tasmania’s cold weather when she sets out along the Hobart Rivulet in the hope of seeing a platypus. As she recalls, when she revealed her plan, ‘…most people laughed’.

I’ll spare you the suspense (she sees one) –

This was perhaps the most amazing … thing that had ever happened to me, and it was a little gleaming smudge, a double-smudge, in a city dam, floating on the water like a wisp of twisted cling-film, like God’s thumbprint on the hasty world. … I stared at Mount Wellington, at the washed-blue sky with afterthought clouds. And I wondered how I had won this impossible lottery.

3/5