brainwavez.org | Home Away, Edited By Louis Greenberg

Home Away: 24 Hours, 24 Cities, 24 Writers, Edited By Louis Greenberg
A brainwavez.org Literary Review

By: Mandy J Watson on 12 May 2010
Category: Books > Reviews
Tags: horror, LGBTI, Team Scripticon

It's an impressive undertaking: coordinate 24 writers to write 24 stories, each inspired by a different hour of the day and a different city of the world, and use these tales to "reflect on the nature of home", with no restriction on genre, fact, or fiction. The result? Whatever you choose to make of it.

Home Away, edited by Louis Greenberg

I found that the best way to enjoy Home Away is slowly, a tale or two at a time. Though this requires incredible self restraint to achieve, as the stories are so compelling and what you really want to do is sit in a sunny spot on a warm summer evening, or in front of an inviting fireplace on a chilly winter one, and read the entire book in one intense sweep.

Pausing, however, gave me time to savour the characters, the situations, and the cities. It also gave me time to reflect - not only on the authors, some of whom I know well, and some of whom I've yet to meet, but also, more importantly, on the stories and my reaction to them. Some were incredibly, unexpectedly poignant while others where fun-filled, exhilarating rides through a time and a place I may never get to experience. With such a variety, I never knew what was coming next and this was rather exciting because I had few expectations and an open mind.

Quick Q&A with Home Away Editor Louis Greenberg

How did you determine which writer got which time slot? Was there a brawl?
The first set of writers got a choice of many, then the options were limited, and I just had to assign the last couple of slots to the last writers who confirmed. Most writers were quite flexible, others had a specific time in mind. There were a couple of last-minute switches, but it never got ugly. Interestingly the darkest hours between midnight and dawn were the first to be snapped up... a dark bunch, writers.

Was it a similar situation for the city choices?
Most people had a clear idea of the cities they could write about, or offered a small range from which I selected to avoid repetition of the same city and for a bit of geographic range (with an emphasis on Africa). But Lauren [Beukes] was the last writer to confirm and I had only one story from Asia, so I press-ganged her into writing about Tokyo, where she had never been. I knew she'd come up with the goods. I chose my city, Ushuaia, because there was nothing from South America. I could have written about Bogota or Cartagena, Colombia, or Buenos Aires, but chose to put a nice, far-flung pin in the map.

While the book's theme remains consistent and ties everything together the way in which it is expressed varies wildly, from horror, science fiction, noir, and crime, to comedy, whimsy, and nostalgia. Some stories are invented, others, such as Rustum Kozain's Royaumont Hash-Up (Paris/Royaumont, 10pm) in which he recounts a literal hash up in an ancient abbey with a group of modern-day minstrels and Sarah Britten's Redundant (Sydney, 3am), in which we are privy to the late-night insomniac mental processing of a woman coming to grips with her sense of alienation in Sydney, her new home, are writer reminiscences of actual events or experiences; still others are something a little in between, such as Richard de Nooy's Stowaway (between Liberec and Rokytnice nad Jizerou, Czech Republic/Amsterdam, 2am), in which we learn the fates of each piece of luggage in a seven-piece matching set, but told from an unexpected perspective. Many stories are quite obviously fiction (there are so far, to my knowledge, no South African mecha pilots in Tokyo (Lauren Beukes' Unathi Battles The Killer Hairballs (Tokyo, 11am) or zombies in Botswana (Sarah Lotz' Maun Of The Dead (Maun, 8am)) but others drift so adroitly along that line between fact and fiction that it's impossible to tell, such as Fiona Snyckers' The Tea Break (Oxford, 10am), in which we are reminded, wonderfully, of just how serious, studious - and alien - the South African work ethic is, and Karina Magdalena Szczurek's Our Brass Bed (Braunau Am Inn/Geretsdorf/Salzburg, Austria, 7pm), which is an intense exploration of identity in a context that is almost completely foreign to me, yet I connected with it easily.

It was the poignant stories that resonated most with me, and this caught me by surprise and really led to long periods of introspection and contemplation on the nature of home and identity. With the vast changes that have happened in South Africa in the past 15 years we are all very sensitive to these issues and many of us have also been left to question the very nature of what our home and identity is. Many of us are lost. We don't know who we are. We don't know who others are expecting us to be. I've certainly felt this - white, English-speaking South Africans don't have a culture and a heritage that is as easily identifiable as someone who is white and speaks Afrikaans, or is Coloured, or Xhosa, or Zulu, or Ndebele, or .... It's hard to know who you are - sometimes you just know who you aren't. In this context of culture and identity, I experienced an ephiphany towards the end of the book. While I won't go into detail, I realised that certain subtleties within the various sentiments that are expressed collectively in Home Away represent aspects of my culture. While they may resonate with people from other parts of the world there is something so inherently "us" about them that I realised that that, with which I do identify, is my culture.

A Postcard From brainwavez.org, With Love
In his foreward to the book Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat and the author of Q & A: A Novel (Slumdog Millionaire), alludes to a possible outcome in the opening story, To Kill A Politician by Zukiswa Wanner (Nairobi, midnight). I read the entire story with this stuck in my mind, wondering if he had intentionally been deceiving me with a red herring, or if he'd actually dropped a plot spoiler, and mentally berating him for doing either. It ruined the pacing and my focus on what is a really great tale. My advice? Either read the foreward afterwards (in fact, it makes for a poignant afterword) or ignore the info nugget. It is, in fact, neither a red herring nor a plot spoiler. Unfortunately, by the time you realise this, it will have become both.

Cultural Exchange
If you are not a Japanophile it's recommended that you brush up before tackling Lauren Beukes-san's story Unathi Battles The Killer Hairballs for maximum enjoyment. Research Takashi Murakami, KaiKai Kiki, Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Aokigahara (link NSFW), the forest of suicides.

(PS don't research the word that appears after "vampire". It's NNNNNNSFW.)

Watching The Clock
I was initially bothered by two things in the book. The first was that a few too many authors used the hour timeframe - or, more accurately, utilised the constraint of the timeframe a little too conveniently and literally. The clock struck and they left the story hanging there, the ending blowing in the wind, and me screaming "Damn you!" (not sure whether I was directing that at the author or the clock). While the first instance of this technique was a novel way to end a story, I became annoyed the next few times it happened. It felt like a cop out. Maybe I should just end this review without a rating and hint at both carrots and sticks so BOOK Southern Africa doesn't know how to categorise it?

My second annoyance was the exact opposite of this problem - a few authors drifted so hazily through time and space it was almost impossible to grasp the connection between their writing and the hour in which they were playing. I'm a bit pedantic. If you frame something within the context of distinct hours I want distinct hours.

Authors cannot be tamed, I guess.

Also, I eventually got over it.

This book, designed to use the voices of those who were born or raised, or who have at some point been resident, in South Africa to tell the story of what home means in a South African context, is an outstanding work. Not only are many genres, in quite a rare occurrance, allowed to sit happily side by side within its pages, inviting you to reconsider some of those that you usually would avoid, but it's a fantastic introduction to a collection of contemporary Africa-focussed writers, some of whom you may never have heard of and the works of others of whom you may have previously sidestepped in the book store because they fall outside of your genre preferences. It's also a great collection to purchase in preparation for a certain soccer tournament taking place this year that I believe I cannot name; I already fear having my web site destroyed for unauthorised abstruse reference to a trademark. What I'm saying is: if you're going to be here for that thing, it's a great introduction to what "here" is and it will also make a great gift for those you left behind. If you're not coming for that thing, it's a way to become engaged in the spirit of the place while you're in your armchair avoiding the ad-nauseum repeat of the authorised advertisers' advertisements during televised broadcasts of that thing you're not coming for.

I know I haven't mentioned all the writers in this review, rather focussing on the work as a whole, but this by no means indicates a dissatisfaction with any of the stories. Though some resonated with me much more intensely than others, and that almost feels as though it should be kept a private matter betwen myself and the book, all the stories contributed something quite special to the overall picture Home Away paints of identity. There was something quite enjoyable about encountering each new story with no idea of what to expect. I don't wish to discuss any of the stories in any particular detail for I fear I will destroy the magic inherent in each one - rather, I'd prefer readers to discover them for themselves. (The comments section of this review, however, is open to discussions and spoilers.)

Home Away speaks to the heart and soul of the South African spirit but its themes are universal and its tales touch (almost) all the continents. It is a magnificent compilation and is highly recommended.

A proof copy of Home Away was provided by Zebra Press for review purposes. The book is available at local retailers in South Africa and should be available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk soon. Refer to the "Shop Online" box below for more details. All author royalties are being donated to two worthy projects, the Adonis Musati Project in the Western Cape and Kids Haven in Gauteng.