'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?' reviewed by Derek Workman in The Kalahari Review

 

A look at Bryony Rheam’s new collection of short fiction

Derek Workman

Reproduced from The Kalahari Review (https://kalaharireview.com)

Bryony Rheam’s collection of short stories, Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?, is a stunning group of stories that shows the Zimbabwean writer’s range and formidable control of language and tone.

The stories move through situations that are at once so real and palpable that you can feel a hot road beneath your feet and smell flowers in the garden. Yet they are sprinkled with the small serial thoughts and moments that make up our lives.

In “The Colonel Comes By”, Ms Rheam shows the long path that grief and loss can take. She gives us  sentences like “Forgiveness is a long process…And there is a lot of it to be done.” And, “We wanted someone to appear, their arms around a smiling Mom, and say everything was alright. It was all over, the searching. We could go back to our bikes and our games and our petty arguments and be ourselves; be children once again.”

Throughout the collection, she shows us again and again ways the generational emotions are passed down — and the beauty there is in preserving someone’s innocence as long as we can. Especially in the story “Castles in the Air”, which follows a mother and daughter on an evening and sees how the mother can see the dangers in the world but protects her daughter’s sense of joy all along the way. A stunning gift that our parents have given us.

The story “Potholes” is such a gentle mix of harsh emotions, handled with such a soft hand, that it is incredible. And “The Piano Tuner” shows the change of time, how some things can shift, but the nature of privilege and power tends to always remain.

Ms Rheam’s control of tone and sentences is formidable — guiding the reader through her world and scenes, which are filled with lushness and strong emotions, with firm and gentle hands.

Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is a perfect gift for any time of the year, especially now as we are in the festive season. You can purchase this wonderful collection online through the UK publisher Parthian Books , through Amazon UK or The African Books Collective.

Derek Workman is the founding editor of The Kalahari Review. When he is not running the publication he takes photographs. You can find more of his work at derekworkman.com.

Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is published by amaBooks (Zimbabwe) and Parthian Books (UK).