The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories, by Alasdair Gray
reviewed by Stephen Bernstein

Canongate, 2004. 181 pp. $21.00.

The stories in Alasdair Gray’s latest collection range in length from three to over forty pages. They come adorned with Gray’s usual collection of designs and are followed by the “End Notes and Critic Fuel” section that he has incorporated elsewhere. As nearly always for Gray, the book ends with the word “Goodbye.” This American edition does not boast the decorated endpapers and boards of its British counterpart, which quotes Seamus Heaney on its cover: “Remember everything and keep your head!” Gray’s fiction has always depended on acts of memory. The protagonists of his great novels—Lanark, 1982 Janine, and Poor Things—all learn that their suffering can be abated only through the recovery of personal and national pasts. “No Bluebeard,” the longest story here, follows in this vein, as the increasingly reflective narrator comes to see how much responsibility he bears for a series of bad relationships with women. This is a diverse collection, and other stories focus on subjects that include a creative-writing instructor’s record of meetings with a student who may be brilliant or may be a plagiarist, a brief account of an abusive landholding class, and a recasting of the story of Job with a modern businessman, whose sons are killed in the 9/11 attacks, for a protagonist. Gray’s short fiction has arguably never been as strong as his novels, and readers who know him only through the novels may miss some of their power here. But there is much to recommend and enjoy. Gray’s characteristic style appears in abundance, and the sheer melody of his sentences is undiminished. His political sympathies will strike a respondent chord in many, and his dogged idiosyncrasy is as marvelous as ever to behold.