In This Block There Lives a Slag...: And Other Yorkshire Fables: And Other Bradford Fables [Hardcover]

These twelve stories (six of which previously appeared in various literary publications) are unlikely to be featured in any tourism brochures for Yorkshire -- especially Bradford. They are universally infused with a cynical worldview, a slightly surreal bent, and repetitive series of chronically dissociated loners. Much of it feels like aimless riffing, as if you could skip a page of a story and not miss a thing, however, there are a few nuggets of gold to be found.

Most of the stories are set amidst the dreary council estates of Bradford and the lost souls who live there. The title story is one of these, and contains a number of nice moments coalescing into a satisfyingly surreal ending. (If you're curious about the book, this story is available online at The Barcelona Review). Brimming with descriptive detail, "Coddock" is a too-short four pages about the rise and fall of a rejuvenated fish-and-chip shop and plays nicely as a succinct metaphor for urban improvement. "Tony Harrison" is another good but short (eleven pages) work, this time about the rise and fall of a junkie who moves in next door to a book-reading, classical music-listening narrator. However, the seven pages of "The Hands Reveal", flash through a teenage junkie girl's existence without making a mark. "Bouncing Back" is a broad satire of attempts by the Bradford City Council to improve the city's image by engaging in a little street marketing. I didn't find it nearly as hilarious or skewering as other reviewers did though.

One of the best stories is "The Kingfishers...The Distances", a heartbreaker in which another loner in a bar meets and talks to a woman who haunts his memory and changes his life -- the ending is a killer. The other excellent story is "The Tale of the Golden Bath Taps", a angsty tale of the strange relationship between a musician and a bartender/stripper with severe psychological problems. There are also a several set-pieces, which aren't particularly good, such as "Songs That Won the War", a fairly disposable twelve pages about the narrator's father dying of cancer. Another is "Mr. Personality in the Field of Poses", in which a woman ruminates on her boyfriend. Then there is "Short Cut to the Sun" which recounts an evening in a jazz club with Sun Ra, and is unlikely to appeal anyone except Sun Ra fans. Then, there's the opening story, "Wrestling Jacob" takes the rural stereotype of man/sheep love and twists it into a fable about a man who wrestles with a ram and beds a series of disposable women. Of course, in the end, he loves the sheep and couldn't care less for the women.

As is often the case with short story collections, this is a pretty mixed bag. The writing is rather too self-conscious for my taste, as Broady appears intent on cramming in as many references as possible: the Bible, Shakespeare, various poets, classic music, Elvis, and on and on and on. It doesn't help that he occasionally will repeat things from his bag of tricks, such as descriptions involving Hitler's mustache twice, and twice referring to Shakespeare's "Exit Left - Pursued by Bears" line. The collection would have been greatly strengthened by having one or two common narrators to tie it all together a bit. Because whether architect, writer, social worker, or musician, the narrators all sound and act pretty much exactly the same. It also suffers from a kind of strange quasi-elitist, "this is my little grimy part of the world, don't you dare try and make it better" attitude. On the whole, I'd be very hesitant to recommend this to anyone who doesn't have some kind of specific interest in Bradford.