Feedback about Bryony Rheam's All Come to Dust from bookseller Kristin Prout on Netgalley

 

Ultimately, I enjoyed this story very much. It became heavier than I had expected and dealt with some issues I am still processing. If you are looking for a mystery with what I would almost describe as a character study of Zimbabwe this is for you. It was intriguing and unusual and I can't wait to read more from Bryony Rheam!

Buzz Magazine: Explore the realities of life in Zimbabwe with WHATEVER HAPPENED TO RICK ASTLEY?

 Megan Thomas reviews Bryony Rheam's short story collection in Buzz Magazine (https://www.buzzmag.co.uk/whatever-happened-to-rick-astley-zimbabwean-stories-review/)

An intriguing title that matches the short stories that follow, Bryony Rheam’s Whatever Happened To Rick Astley? opens a window to allow readers a glimpse of life, in all its forms, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The collection opens strong with the story of a young man, a modern Sisyphus in some ways, who has the self-appointed task of filling the potholes on a road every day, despite how they return… until a high profile politician is due to move nearby. Then, of course, the road is fixed professionally. Luckily – or probably unluckily – there is always a potholed road in Bulawayo.

The stories that follow take us from the dusty streetside to lush gardens, filled with characters facing different but constant challenges and experiences. Each story forms a piece of a larger, mismatched-but-realistic puzzle of the fluctuations of life in a country that mirrors these ups and downs in different ways. 

As a well-rounded and gratifying short story collection should, Whatever Happened To Rick Astley? is both an anthology of tiny worlds, each compact and consumable on their own, but they also form part of a bigger collection of work which, on finishing, feel inseparable from one another.

An Authentic Zimbabwean Voice | Nhlanhla Dube reviews Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? by Bryony Rheam in Brittle Paper

 Bryony Rheam's short story collection Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? reviewed by Nhlanhla Dube in Brittle Paper (https://brittlepaper.com/2024/04/an-authentic-zimbabwean-voice-a-review-of-whatever-happened-to-rick-astley-by-bryony-rheam).

Bryony Rheam’s latest collection of short stories is a striking book. Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? shows just how prolific Rheam has become. This is her third book after This September Sun and All Come to Dust, and is a valiant attempt at understanding Zimbabwe.

In her fiction, Rheam is unrepentant about being Zimbabwean. The figure of the white Zimbabwean writer has caused significant discomfort in Zimbabwean literary circles. Zimbabwe’s strained race relations have meant that contributions to the canon by white writers have often faced extra scrutiny. Scrutiny in order to ascertain relevance, aesthetic fit, and maybe most worryingly, patriotic allegiance. Through her books, and more specifically this latest one, Rheam proves that she is an authentic Zimbabwean voice.

In Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?, Bryony Rheam demonstrates an acute awareness of the Zimbabwean landscape and its people. The first story in the collection, “Potholes”, is a beautiful ode to suburban Bulawayo. Gibson Sibanda, the protagonist in that story, fills the potholes that are found along most of suburbia’s roads. In performing this thankless duty, Gibson represents the humdrum nature of life in Zimbabwe. Daily toil without material comfort, Gibson’s duties are a Sisyphean act, but they are nonetheless performed with feverish zeal. Passing motorists don’t acknowledge his hard work – “Hardly anyone stopped to say thank you or toss him a couple of coins”. The story is deeply political. It comments on the political climate because the road Gibson fixes is eventually revealed to be one which leads to the Vice President’s house. City Council funds are eventually directed to fixing the road properly. Rheam generally shies away from overt political commentary in her work. However, this story shows that literary political commentary can be done in subtle ways. Ways which do not provoke the establishment, but which are still perceptive and nimble.

Rheam is often at her strongest when she writes about Zimbabwe’s diaspora. Migration has greatly shaped, to a considerable degree, the Zimbabwean narrative of the past two decades. In “Last Drink At The Bar”, Zimbabwe’s white diaspora is brought into focus. William Floyd moves from Bulawayo to Wales in order to escape what has become the tragic image of Zimbabwe’s elderly whites. White aged Zimbabweans often meet their demise at old people’s homes, abandoned by their children who are overseas and with no family to care for them. William Floyd makes a life for himself in the UK. Returning home often is a way to ameliorate the fact that despite material comforts, the United Kingdom is a bleak, cold and desolate country. “He tried pub after pub after pub after pub, but never did he find anywhere quite like The Bar in Bullies”. There is a spatiotemporal shift that occurs whilst William is abroad. The home he returns to is not the home he left. More so, the people he left behind have changed. William no longer fits in. This is not the first time Rheam has explored this theme. Her novel This September Sun charts this same problem. Once a person leaves home, that home is lost forever.

Rheam has a talent for observing small situations. Seemingly unimportant interactions between characters are focused on, to reveal that there is much more going on beneath the surface. Rheam thus appears to be a writer who follows the molds left by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. In this collection, the focus is not on fast action or big things, but rather minute detail. The titular short story “Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?” demonstrates this abundantly. In that story, a mother reflects on the passage of time and her grown-up child: “It seemed like just the other day that she had held him as a baby; just the other day that she had lain awake at night, rubbing her swollen belly, contemplating the years that lay before them both”. The central theme of the story is that time moves forward and it waits for no one. Rheam’s central point is that there is a line of connection between generations. Life repeats itself. The young become old, and youth is fleeting. In the story, Rick Astley’s music signifies the passage of time. A musician once at the center of popular culture has now faded into obscurity.

These stories from Rheam are decent for the most part. However, Rheam struggles with consistency in quality. Throughout the collection, there are some stories which are notably underwhelming. “The Colonel Comes By” is one such story. This is a story about family bonds and a tenuous father-and-daughter relationship. One is not sure whether it’s meant to be a children’s narrative, a ghost story, or an exploration of quack new age mysticism. Whatever it is meant to be, Rheam fails spectacularly in demonstrating her point to the reader.

Another deficient story is “The Piano Tuner”. It takes place in Ndola, Zambia. This is an unusual setting far from Rheam’s usual Bulawayo. Leonard Mwale is the piano tuner hired by an Asian couple to do some work. The story seems to hint at racial tension and bigotry but it never quite makes this exposition. Rheam over-deploys her subtlety. The result is that the story’s thematic exploration is unfulfilled. The reader is left with innuendos and hints that are never explained. I pity the undergraduates who will be forced to analyze this story in some English 101 introductory class at university.

Another exception, albeit a minor one, I take with this collection is the inclusion of “The Queue”. This story was earlier published in the “Short Writings From Bulawayo” anthology. Including it in this latest collection is unfair and the publisher should have done better. There is no value for money for the book buyer if they are paying just to read stories they have come across before. To be fair, Rheam is not the only writer to do this. However, seeing as this is her first collection, it would have been wise to use the opportunity to publish only new stories readers have not come across before.

Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is a welcome book. Rheam’s writing career is progressing. With many publishers closing shop in the country, we should welcome any new books that aim to qualitatively add to the canon. Zimbabwean literature benefits from voices such as Rheam’s. However, Rheam is now becoming an established writer and the critical acclaim of her first trailblazing novel This September Sun has long worn off. This collection was a chance for her to show off her ambidexterity when she writes between the novel and the short story form. Although there are some glimpses of excellence, I’m not convinced that she has demonstrated her literary excellence through these short stories.

Nhlanhla Dube: Contributor

Nhlanhla Dube is a native of Harare,Zimbabwe. He holds a PhD in English Studies from Stellenbosch University. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town. His research interests are Geocriticism, Spatiality, Literary Bulawayo and John Eppel. He has published peer reviewed papers on Law and Literature and Literary Pornography.

Parthian Books a finalist in The British Book Awards

Congratulations to the Welsh publisher Parthian Books for being selected as a finalist in The British Book Awards in the Small Press of the Year category. We have worked with Parthian on five titles featuring Zimbabwean writers - the short story anthologies Where to Now? and Moving On and Other Zimbabwean Stories, and three titles by Bryony Rheam: the award-winning novels This September Sun and All Come to Dust, and the short story collection Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?.

'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.

Wales Arts Review of Bryony Rheam's 'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?'

Reproduced from https://www.walesartsreview.org/whatever-happened-to-rick-astley-by-bryony-rheam/

Eluned Gramich reviews a vibrant new collection of short stories from one of Zimbabwe’s leading writers in the form, 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

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. One story in particular, ‘The Last Drink at the Bar’, sees a man visiting his homeland over the years from his job teaching in Wales, and each time he feels as though he is being pushed away, alienated, from the culture and community in which he was raised. His old drinking mates are suspicious of his desire to return; after all, shouldn’t he have everything he wants in the UK? Rheam explores the idea of belonging and un-belonging further by revealing the tensions in travel and tourism: ‘His was the oblivion of the tourist who sees only himself, the pivotal figure around which everything else revolves’, she writes of one character during his visit to Bristol, heavy with its history of the slave trade, its ‘Whiteladies Road’ and ‘Black Boy Hill’. In ‘The Fountain of Lethe’, a woman insists on bringing her family to a beloved holiday spot in Bulawayo, but the visit does not turn out to be what she had hoped: ‘What was it, that particular feel of hotel rooms? That mixture of holiday excitement and disappointment one wavered between.’ There are countless moments like these in the collection: sentences, wonderfully wrought, that illuminate everyday life.

This is Rheam’s third publication in Wales – following two successful novels This September Sun and All Come to Dust, both of which received major prizes. I enjoyed her novels, which are expansive and wide-ranging, but entering into the compact, complex, emotionally layered world of her stories, I was amazed by Rheam’s ability to move, and to create a deep sense of place, and character, in only a few pages. For me, one of the strongest stories is ‘Dignum et Justum est’, which follows two immigrant English teachers in Bulawayo as they travel towards very different fates: the story spans decades, yet it succeeds in giving a detailed portrait of the lives of these teachers, and the society to which they adapt – or fail to adapt. Rheam does this by employing a ‘light touch’; by never saying too much, or too little, which shows what a consummate writer she is. As for what happened to Rick Astley, you will have to read the collection, right to the last story, to find out.

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.

'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).