Rusticles - Rebecca Gransden

Rusticles is a collection of 11 short stories from indie writer Rebecca Gransden. These stories are all dark, dealing with the underbelly of the lives in the fictional town of Hilligoss, but I would hesitate to label it as horror. There is something more human about them all - they have been written to do more than scare us.


Rusticles is a collection of 11 stories centred around the town of Hilligoss. Hilligoss seems like a dark, dark place. The residents are dealing with stealthy flamingos, ghosts which may or may not have been summoned, missing addict family members and many other surreal and not so surreal predicaments. The eleven stories all read like they are an excerpt from much larger pieces of writing. They hit the ground running, with no introductions to characters or settings or motivations. The reader then must start to fill the gaps in the picture with dribs and drabs of information, and ultimately decide for themselves what the picture is. Take the first story, The Neon Black Wall for example. The lead character, a teenage girl is re-visiting a place where something awful happened to her. We don't know what. We don't know when or who. We just see this part of her life - the return to the place where it happened. And it makes for some great reading. I don't mean to say the stories are incomplete - it feels like Gransden has written exactly what she set out to write - and it's up to us to fill in the gaps.

The writing throughout the collection felt extremely deliberate. Every word seems to have been picked with a lot of thought, and Rebecca has manged to give the town of Hilligoss and the book a really dismal feel through the language she's used. In The Dilapidated Flamingo the flamingo is said to "stick its head out of the leaves, like a dog's lipstick". Gross. But surely Rebecca could have used a thousand different similes for this - what about regular lipstick? But she didn't. She gave us this image. Thanks Rebecca. Flamingo was one of my favourites in this collection, by the way. It tells the story of a teenage boy who keeps spotting a flamingo in his garden. His father and his neighbour can't see it, and he can't trap it. It's a wonderfully strange little tale, that mixes childish innocence with a more grown up way of thinking. And what does that flamingo represent? I think it's the narrator's sexuality - if you have read this please do let me know your thoughts.

Rusticles is a nice little collection - the eleven stories are told over 97 pages, so it is easy to read the whole thing in one sitting. It's like a little trip to a town where it's always night time and the residents are all hiding dark secrets. It's great fun. Rebecca has shown she has a natural talent for writing, and in particular giving her work a real atmosphere.



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