'Whatever Happened to Rick Ashley?' nominated for National Arts Merit Award

Bryony Rheam's short story collection Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? has been nominated for the Outstanding Fiction Book category of Zimbabwe's premier arts awards, the National Arts Merit Awards. The awards celebrate the achievements of artists across a wide array of categories, from music, literature and visual arts to film, theater, dance, and journalism. This year, for the 22nd edition, a record-breaking 1,280 entries were received. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony, to be held in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo on 24 February. 

Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is co-published by Zimbabwean publisher amaBooks and Welsh publisher Parthian Books. The two publishers have cooperated in publishing four other titles: two short story anthologies, Where to Now? and Moving On and Other Zimbabwean Stories, and two novels by Bryony Rheam, This September Sun and All Come to Dust. This September Sun won Best First Book at the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Awards, and All Come to Dust won the best fiction categories in both the Bulawayo Arts Awards and the Zimbabwe National Arts Merit Awards.

Reviews of Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? have all been positive including that of Eluned Gramich in Wales Arts Review: 'Rheam writes beautifully and skilfully about people whose lives have been affected by waves of migration and immigration; of the generational ebb and flow of people coming to, and leaving, Zimbabwe.' 

Derek Workman of The Kalahari Review, writes: '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.' 

And in Zimbabwe's NewsHawks, Ignatius Mabasa adds: 'This is a very important voice in Zimbabwean literature. Through her sensitivity to race and class struggles she allows African readers to see white people struggling with the very same issues that also affect black people. The stories therefore become a window and an intercultural dialogue of some sort.'

Bryony Rheam is currently working on her third novel, The Dying of the Light, which is set in Bulawayo at the time of the rise of the Rhodesian Front.

'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).