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.
Reproduced from https://www.walesartsreview.org/whatever-happened-to-rick-astley-by-bryony-rheam/
‘The afternoon hangs suspended in the drowsy heat of late October. The house is quiet with the softness of sleepers.’ So begins ‘Music from a Farther Room’, one of sixteen stunning stories in Zimbabwean writer Bryony Rheam’s collection, Whatever happened to Rick Astley? The themes of the story are echoed throughout the book: isolation, loss, and a profound dislocation; of not knowing whether it’s the place or the people that truly create a sense of belonging. This particular story focuses on Julia, an elderly woman sharing a house with her son and English daughter-in-law, newly arrived in Zimbabwe from the UK. It moves deftly between the two women’s perspective, full of curiosity and understanding for both points of view. It’s not simply a generational divide that complicates their relationship, but cultural and social differences too, leading to a profound loneliness for both of them. Rheam’s smooth, resonating prose captures the increasing solitude thus: Julia’s ‘children are scattered throughout the world, not one on African soil. They’ve all asked her to live with them … but she always shook her head and gave a little laugh. Gradually, they stopped asking.’
 |
| Bryony Rheam |
Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is available to buy in the UK here.
Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is co-published by amaBooks and Parthian Books.
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).
Reproduced from NewsHawks (thenewshawks.com), 6 October 2023 p.52, https://anyflip.com/ylrqu/jknb/
Title: Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?
Author: Bryony Rheam
Publisher: amaBooks/Parthian Books
Year: 2023
ISBN (Zimbabwe): 978-1-77931-095-8
ISBN (UK): 978-1-91459-514-1
Reviewed by Ignatius T. Mabasa
Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is an unforgettable collection of stories that take you on an emotional roller coaster. Bryony Rheam is amazing in the way she is consistent in carefully crafting and sustaining the intensity of emotions in her stories. She does not just narrate a story but rather she becomes part of the story, as a keen observer who picks small but metaphorically rich actions and reactions, splashing colour here and there to make murals. And besides the colours, she wields a powerful hammer like the mythical Thor, and uses it to demolish façades in relationships, triggering mudslides of vulnerability and emotions, exposing complexities and fractured pieces of what appear to be good normal lives.
Rheam almost effortlessly but slyly uses irony in most of her stories. I particularly enjoyed the vividness with which she captures emotions and thought processes of her characters. She is a conscientious arranger of lines, sense, feeling and tone – coming up with a heavy, rich-smelling and fresh bouquet. 'The Colonel Comes By' exhibits the intense power and beauty that Rheam, like a gardener, uses to cut and arrange relationships, casting away some, and allowing them to wilt and be burnt. The metaphorical richness of the story – those errant flowers, the order and the effect we have on each other’s lives leading almost to death – is unforgettable, almost haunting.
'Potholes' is another harrowing but beautifully told story. Although talking about a man’s strange relationship with potholes along a road that he has appropriated, the story is a well-executed commentary that centralises traumas of ordinary marginalised people of Zimbabwe against the socio-economic and political milieu. It brings out the raw creativity that is the hallmark of this talented storyteller. 'Potholes' is brilliantly metaphorical as 'Castles in the Air' is beautiful and multi-layered. 'Castles in the Air' appeals to readers in the way it suspends reality to allow the grotesque to take place, yet the reality has a stubborn way of disrupting the fantasy. This story is a shrewd creative tour, analysis and commentary on life and the state of things in Zimbabwe.
And I just loved 'The Piano Tuner', and how Rheam makes the reader respect the art of creative writing because of the patience and magic with which she lures the reader into her story. The mystery and suspense she weaves into the story – casting it against a background of racism, classism and unparalleled irony is stunning. Rheam is indeed what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o called “a writer in politics” – she exhibits brilliant awareness of class struggle, coloniality and the challenges of postcolonial Africa.
If there is a theme that Rheam tackles so well, it is that of the passage of time, and the inevitability of change. 'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?' is an ingenious multi-layered story that serves as a brilliant commentary on morphed relationships. There is a cyclic pattern in life, and Rheam shows how love comes and goes, and how we invest in new loves that are intrinsically anchored to the first love, even though they are completely separate.
Personally, as a Zimbabwean writer who mainly creates in my indigenous language, Rheam has helped me get a quick update of how white people are seeing, managing and documenting happenings in independent Zimbabwe. 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.
Although I was a bit apprehensive that Rheam writes about detailed and complex relationships among Africans as she did in her story 'The Big Trip' – she managed to tear down the wall of my fears by writing in an amazingly convincing manner the type of politics usually found in African families – especially the strain on kinship due to living in a foreign land. She is not writing Africa – looking at it with imperial eyes. She has my respect.
Overall, Rheam’s biggest achievement is her ability to create and curate, as well as sincerely capture the soul of characters, places and relationships. Her characters are unforgettable. She respects the art of creative writing as can be observed in how she is not just for the story, but is able to experiment with form in a manner that only seasoned writers can do. She writes Africa in a sensitive manner – yes, like Doris Lessing.
________________________
Dr. Ignatius T. Mabasa
Reproduced from the Zimbabwe Review, The Journal of the Britain Zimbabwe Society, Issue 23/3 September 2023. ISSN 1362-3168
Review
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO RICK ASTLEY?
Pat Brickhill reviews a collection of short stories by Bryony Rheam
Bryony Rheam’s latest book is a collection of short stories, each one is linked in some way to Zimbabwe.
Most are set in various suburbs of Bulawayo, where Bryony lives with her family. A handful are set in the UK, and The Piano Tuner, a touching story of prejudice and compassion, is set in Zambia.The subject of each story varies from potholes, to disappearing electricity, to the physical and human neglect of Zimbabwe, but each describes a different facet of loss.
'The beauty of the ordinary'
I would agree with fellow Zimbabwean writer Siphiwe Ndlovu, who writes on the back cover that Bryony portrays loss 'of identity, memory, country or a loved one' and 'capture(s) the beauty of the ordinary'.
The writer has a talent for vividly painting with words the world she is writing about. We are drawn into a realm of reflection that arises with the passage of time as we grow older: reliving childhood, or the excitement of joining the world of adults, combined with the loneliness that can come with old age.
These themes are developed in The Queue and These I have Loved, while the consequences of bad life choices are explored in Dignum et Justum est.
Bonding
Bryony Rheam has a wonderful talent for bonding the reader with the story, tackling emotions that are familiar, looking at belonging, the loss of country, of husband, or merely the passage of time. Each story left me with a strong sense of the character struggling against the vagaries of life and perhaps attempting to reach a point of resolution or even redemption.
Castles in the Air was a beautiful descriptive story blending the compassion of motherhood with the magic of childhood, as the mother distracts from a power cut by taking her daughter on a late afternoon walk, enthusiastically joining in her child’s imaginary games. My least favourite story was The Colonel Comes By, which describes the stark, desperate struggle of a single mother, as the ending left this reader rather confused.
The Big Trip, The Young Ones and Last Drink at the Bar explore the familiar divide that opens with choices, or the lack of them, by those who leave their country and those who remain – as each attempts to justify or acknowledge where they live. Moving On is a touching story of coming to terms with the hidden trauma of loss that surfaces when memory and reality merge.
Bryony gives a glimpse of her skill at humour with Christmas. The Fountain of Lethe uncovers a memory from childhood perhaps best left buried.
Finally, the title story is a wonderful wistful reflection of a mother inspired by remembering a song from her youth in Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?.
I found this anthology both touching and entertaining. To some these stories will provoke nostalgia, for many people have endured the trauma of leaving the country of their birth – often leaving loved ones behind. Some tales will leave the reader with a familiar longing and feeling of sadness but every narrative is bursting with warmth and empathy. This anthology provides a poignant glimpse into the lives of strangers who are nevertheless familiar, to all who are fortunate enough to be able read it.
I thoroughly recommend it.
Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? by Bryony Rheam
Published by amaBooks, Zimbabwe/ Parthian Books, UK
ISBN 9781779310958/ 9781914595141
224 pages, 2023
Pat Brickhill is a freelance writer and BZS secretary.
Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is available in the UK through Parthian and all good bookshops and online outlets, in North America through the African Books Collective, and in Zimbabwe through the Orange Elephant in Bulawayo and Bindu Books in Harare.
Reproduced from https://fingaz.co.zw/searching-for-a-sense-of-security-and-continuity-in-zimbabwe/
‘Whatever Happened to Rick Astley’
by Bryony Rheam
amaBooks/Parthian 214 pp., ISBN 978-1-77931-095-8
Book review by DC Rodrigues
WHAT’S not to love about the rich baritone voice of Rick Astley, iconic English singer and pop sensation of the 80s? Fans of a certain age will remember ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ and many other songs that were smash hits in England, Australia and America.
In 1994, after a string of hits, he disappeared from the scene, and in his own words, ‘slipped out the back door when no one was looking and no one cared’. But some people did seem to care, and it was his disappearance that inspired the title of Bryony Rheam’s recently published collection of sixteen short stories, ‘Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?’
Set in Bulawayo, Lusaka, London and Bristol, Rheam explores a number of themes and familiar situations that will resonate on many levels and in different ways with readers all over the world.
In ‘Potholes’ an admirable character, Gibson Sibanda, takes it upon himself to traverse the suburbs of Bulawayo, filling potholes with sand and small stones. Grateful motorists sometimes stop to reward him for his work. As an aside, when considering the number of potholes bedevilling the roads throughout Zimbabwe, the appointment of a dedicated Minister of Potholes might be considered a priority. Zimbabwe is not alone in this problem, and Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, has allocated GBP700 million every year to deal with ‘the curse of potholes’. The fictional Sibanda takes his work seriously, and although he suffers some heartbreaking setbacks, is not deterred from his mission to make the roads of Bulawayo safe.
Although Bryony Rheam is a young woman with a young family, she seems to understand the plight of many of her characters who are elderly and widowed, struggling with a lack of money, and are separated from their children who have emigrated to the UK or to Australia.
The passage of time is a constant theme in Rheam’s stories. Says Prufrock, In TS Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, ‘I have measured out my life in coffee spoons’. In ‘The Rhythm of Life’, seasons come and go, and husband and wife, ex-farmers from Headlands, take bets every year on which day in November the first rains will fall. St Joseph lilies are collected and arranged in vases every February, and sweet pea and poppy seeds are planted in April. August winds regularly bring the threat of veldt fires, to be extinguished by buckets of water, kept at the ready. Anticipating these events creates what Rheam refers to as ‘the soft, undulating rhythm of life’, relied upon to provide ‘our sense of security and continuity.’ A new theme is introduced when the couple leave Zimbabwe, emigrating to an unnamed country where ‘the long journey to work’ is in ‘an overfilled railway carriage’. People have been emigrating for centuries, settling with varying degrees of success in their adopted country. Fossils found in the Cradle of Mankind outside Johannesburg, show that humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonise the world. While oppression, social marginalisation, or a desire to follow family members to other parts of the world may prompt migration, it’s safe to assume that some of Rheam’s characters abandon their social networks and culture for economic reasons.
William Lloyd, in ‘Last Drink at the Bar’, imagines ‘old age, senility and death’ in Zimbabwe, and ‘as much as he loved Bullies’ (Bulawayo), decides to obtain an ancestry visa and trace his father’s roots back to Cardiff in Wales. Failing to find a bar to his taste in Cardiff, or any drinking mates to replace Frikkie, Leonard and Rookie, he eventually finds himself again at Gatwick airport, this time heading north to a new life in Scotland.
There have been several waves of emigration from Zimbabwe, starting in 1965 with the declaration of UDI in Rhodesia; but it is the socio-political crisis that began in 2000 that has seen the number of Zimbabweans inhabiting the diaspora swell to over five million. The effect of this second wave of emigration provides the backdrop to this anthology, allowing Rheam to describe with skill and empathy through fiction, the lives of those who fled abroad and those who stayed behind.
Alternately referred to as ‘she’ or ‘Mom’, the narrator of the final story in the collection reminisces about ‘the good old days’ and imagines attending a Rick Astley concert with her boyfriend, Victor. Searching on Google she discovers that the pop icon of the 80s has come out of retirement, wowing thousands of fans at the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury earlier this year. Relieved that all is well with Rick Astley, ‘Mom’ now feels reassured and positive about her own role in life.
Through her characters, Bryony Rheam explores the themes of parenthood, ageing, lack of money, time past and time present, and immigration. Dispiriting as some of the stories may seem, her fictional characters are compelling and familiar; they also reflect a specific time in the history of Zimbabwe, and will provide compulsive reading for future generations.
If you'd like to watch Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up', click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
•
.jpg)
.jpg)
