They hook you in hard, the people whose lives fill Wendy Erskine’s debut collection, but you wouldn’t want to trade places with any of them. To borrow from the balding man in a grey jacket, who makes a brief appearance commenting on the music of a fictional Belfast rocker in the penultimate story, each of these acutely observed portraits “penetrates to the heart of what it means to be lonely, or in love or to feel a failure”. An exceptional ear for dialogue, an impeccable semantic rhythm and an uncanny ability to tease laughter out of the darkest moments mean Erskine is perfectly poised to stare, unflinching, into our neoliberal abyss. The result is a gripping, wonderfully understated book that oozes humanity, emotion and humour.
The first story, “To All Their Dues”, opens in a beauty parlour. When Kyle walks in, it’s clear he’s not seeking the back, sack and crack treatment. He’s after money: he calls it “community”, we’d call it a protection racket. Kyle is terrifying. On a visit to his brother’s grave, he forces flowers into the mouth of a man who has inadvertently upset him: “He was making a choking sound and the flowers were falling apart but he still kept pushing.” The story unfolds in three parts. First we hear from Mo, who did time “on the fortune telling” at a call centre while studying for the beauty qualifications to get the parlour started; then Kyle, who helped his brother kill their alcoholic and violent father; then the only person Kyle trusts, his girlfriend, Grace, who has learned to expect little more from life than “holidays and meals and trips to the multiplex and city breaks”. Early on, you feel this is heading towards an unpleasant climax, with Kyle’s violent temper at its core, but as Erskine pulls us in deeper, comfortably leaping back and forth across time, she unearths the contradictions that shape a life – leaving us to work out why our sympathy just took another U-turn.
In “Inakeen”, a widow called Jean observes, with increasing affection, her new Somali neighbours. Occasionally, her obnoxious son drops in to watch television and complain about his ex, “that bitch”, who has returned to Canada with their son. The day Jean learned her grandson was leaving, “it had started to rain and everything around was ugly”. Now, she misses the little boy and his mother more than her late husband, “someone she once overheard being described as a fellow who would put a bob on himself both ways”. The tedium of Jean’s life is excruciating, her feeling of abandonment searing. While Erskine shows no interest in triumphant endings, by layering one “little chip of humanity” on another she creates a tenderness that resounds.
“Observation” offers hilarious insights into the relationship between a pair of teenagers, Cath and Lauren, and Lauren’s mum, Kim Cassells – “never just plain Kim”. Cath’s commentary is irresistible: Kim Cassells’s two-tone hair reminds her of “a broken Kinder egg”; being close to Kim Cassells makes Cath “feel lumpen”; Kim Cassells’s tattoo, Only God Can Judge Me, proves “mortal opinion was of no interest to her”. Cath is strangely fascinated by her friend’s mum and her string of boyfriends, the latest a creep called Stuart. As the observations stack up, though, Kim Cassells’s insecurities are revealed. Erskine captures beautifully the painful neglect of her daughter, and the endearing way in which Cath tries to protect her best mate.
All 10 stories are set in Belfast, where Erskine was born in 1968. Readers expecting tales of the Troubles will find glimpses and shadows, but her literary microscope is mostly focused elsewhere, on women and men contending with everyday boredom and disappointment. Like the couple in the title story, whose marriage has been crumbling since the death of their six-year-old. Gavin puts up with “those dreary and micro-managed handjobs”, but he can’t forgive Susan for the “unspeakably quiet and modest” funeral she had insisted on. Susan, meanwhile, has longed to have a breakdown – “it would have been a relief” – but she’s so brittle, it just won’t come.
Others die as they lived, “in front of the TV”. Those left behind seem resigned to the idea that there’s “a time for this, a time for that, a time for whatever”. They are looking for a bit of love and a bit of safety, a bit of hope for a bit of a future. It’s not easy, though, when the place where you live is as tired as you are, “like it can’t be bothered with the afternoon either and longs for the shutters down”. People stare out of their windows, or go for pointless walks looking into shop windows. They collect online vouchers for cheap meals at restaurants with inconvenient time constraints. They are trying either to destroy their past or forget some violence it served up – but the remembered sight of a murder, “the obscenity of an exploded head”, can surface in the most uneventful of lives. Still, Erskine’s subjects do their best to cope. They are trying to keep up; they are trying to reach out. They are doing their best to free themselves from the undertow of their lives.
• Lara Pawson’s This Is the Place to Be is published by CB Editions. Sweet Home is published by Picador (RRP £12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.
