Yellowcake

Margo Lanagan (author)

Allen & Unwin, Australia: March 2011

ISBN: 9781742374789

Genres: short stories

Issues: freedom, relationships, social condition, war

Ten of Margo Lanagan's evocative, disturbing short stories are brought together in an anthology that, like the uranium it is named for, has immense latent power and a slightly dangerous edge.

'Night of the Firstlings' shows the reader a Jewish family on the first Passover night – the desperate hope, the terrible fear, the disbelief, the relief. 'An Honest Day's Work' considers what it might be like if humans were the hunted beasts whose carcasses fed other, smaller folk, rather like the whales that humans hunted almost to extinction. 'Heads' is an unsettling story that explores child survivors in a war-torn landscape; there is a hint of Lord of the Flies about the casual brutality and mercy of the gangs.

Ten stories, each exploring different ideas, different themes, relationships and personalities but all sharing that slight twist on the 'norm' that is Lanagan's speciality, that discomforting 'what if' that is the writer's trademark. Like E.M. Forster's, Lanagan's stories are complex, taut and disturbing, richly textured and layered pieces that grant the reader a foretaste another world. As with images glimpsed through a train window, the stories are not necessarily complete or explicit; more often than not they leave the reader wondering if they've caught the writer's idea accurately or whether they've missed something important.

That is the power of a well-crafted short story. Like a poem, it swamps the reader's mind with characters, images, emotions and provokes an intense, almost physical response – the cold shiver of fear, the warm wash of joy, the stomach-clenching tension of uncertainty. Best read one at a time, rationed as all rich foods should be, the stories in Yellowcake will haunt the periphery of your imagination for weeks and have you looking at the world in a slightly different way, wondering 'what if that really happened?'