Fiction Reviews
Drive or Be Driven
Stories of Travel(2024) Aliya Whiteley, NewCon Press, £??, pbk, 220pp, ISBN 978-1-914-95370-5
Loosely arranged around the theme of the sub-title, this is an ‘all killer, no filler’ collection consisting of nineteen deeply weird and often quite unsettling stories, twelve of which appear here for the first time. If I had to pick a favourite, it would probably be ‘Multiply’, which starts off with a classic ‘ill-matched crew in a broken spaceship’ set-up, slides into Alien territory, then suddenly drops the reader into a psychologically perturbing ending.
A close runner-up would be ‘Luisa Opines’ which not so much twists the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as renders it pretzel-shaped. Similarly enigmatic is ‘The Emblem of Daydreams’, in which the entity of the title is imprisoned with the ‘Paddle Steamer of Patriotism’ and ‘Chin of Integrity’, until she is motivated to escape and find her way back to humanity.
Not all of the stories provoked a ‘Wait, what?!” exclamation, however. Wrapped’, for example, is presented via the early-twentieth century diary entries of an Egyptologist, who discovers the relics of a forgotten female Pharoah and whose career is likewise snatched away from her in a cruel act of betrayal. Similarly brutal is the transactional framework of ‘Cold Trade’ in which the explorers of an alien world come to appreciate just what is required to interact with the inhabitants. For balance, ‘The Librarian’, offers a more positive slice of science-fiction, as the narrator guides a student through a virtual ‘Dataworld’ and ends up learning something new herself.
Having said that, the apocalypse in one form or another looms large in many of the stories. One of the hardest to summarise is ‘Ongoing’, ostensibly about two academics in some far-off future, perhaps, their interaction threaded through with an ancient myth of successive cataclysms, as they face their own coming storm. ‘A Million Moving Parts’ by contrast hinges on the simple premise of words no longer ‘working’ but it’s the relationship between the central characters that is the focus as they struggle to cope with their new circumstances.
Frightening change is also a theme of ‘Pack Your Coat’ which weaves urban myth into a tale of leaving home. As with a number of others, there is an overall feeling of poignancy here. ‘Your Hero’ is similarly elegiac, with a man stopping to help a boy by the roadside, as he drives home through clouds of ash, having failed to rescue his son. There’s no twist here, just an opportunity to reflect. Likewise, ‘Drive Or Be Driven’ also features two people in a car, cleaving to each other as they strive to extract meaning from mundanity in the face of the climate catastrophe.
In ‘A Possible Location For Eagles’, on the other hand, some kind of catastrophe has already happened but in this case it’s fantastical, to do with the power of negative thoughts but is similarly devastating.
The collection is book-ended by two short pieces: in ‘Early Bird’ the protagonist sets off early for work, only to find the motorway jammed and with no cars coming from the other direction. In the words of the song, does she stay or does she go? In ‘At Night, the Road’, by contrast, the narrator abandons her car in an attempt to re-discover the smooth road of her childhood explorations but then becomes aware that there is something else out there with her.
What elevates all of these stories above the merely strange or disconcerting or just downright creepy is the quality of the writing. Whiteley’s way with words and her deft use of an eye-opening phrase add depth and nuance and, crucially, an element of humanity to the weirdness. There are scenes here that will resonate and linger, including some that you might wish wouldn’t!
Steven French
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