Book Review: THE REDEMPTION OF GALEN PIKE by Carys Davies
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The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies |
| Salt Publishing, 2014 £9.99 |
Carys Davies’ second short story collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike, winner of the 2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, is unique and exquisitely human. It dives deep into the lives of not-so-everyday people in very few words, yet capturing the experience entirely. Davies is a rare talent capable of narrating a plethora of voices with clarity and skillful ease.
The collection opens with a story called “The Quiet,” which aptly sets the tone for the stories that follow. “The Quiet” centers on the idea that sometimes strangers have much more in common than they think or want to believe. Protagonist Susan Boyce is wary of her neighbor, Mr. Fowler, because of the way he looks at her and seeks her out. Immediately readers are led to believe that Mr. Fowler’s intentions are less than honorable, but in fact he has seen something in Susan that reminds him of himself, a pain they both suffer, quietly. When their common burden is revealed, the final paragraph expertly shapes the emotion readers are left hanging with:
She took his small brown hand and lifted it to her cheek and closed her eyes like someone who hadn’t known till now how tired they were, and then she asked him, would he help her, please, to dig the hole.
With this final line, readers need no further explanation. Every detail Davies planted along the way created a landscape of vivid feeling that was achieved without once naming the emotions of her characters, and it is brought to a close neatly with Susan’s quiet acceptance of her bond with Mr. Fowler.
Other stories are less complex, such as “Bonnet” or “Myth,” but are no less well-crafted. In “Bonnet,” a woman changes the color of her bonnet lining in the hopes of garnering more attention from the man she secretly loves. In “Myth,” we see the startling perspective of a woman who is losing a breast, willingly, to appease her Amazonian Queen. But even these simpler narratives capture tenderness, in “Bonnet,” Davies writes:
For a moment, he is speechless—all he can do is stand there looking at her and wishing that he could tell her something, the future perhaps… but he knows nothing of her future – nothing that could come now to her rescue or to his… and he says nothing about the bonnet and neither does she but it is the worst imaginable thing for her to sit and feel the bright new silk around her face, like a shout, and see how embarrassed he is, how he can’t look at it.
These moments are staples in Davies’ writing. Her ability to so fully capture complex emotions in very few words is indicative of an award-winning author. The namesake of the collection, “The Redemption of Galen Pike,” is equally extraordinary. A convicted man is due to be hanged, and in the short time before his sentence is carried out, he is visited daily by Miss Haig, who brings him biscuits and talks to him. Their interactions are not inspiring, but rather dark, grounded, capturing the grit of such a time before a man dies, not pulling excessive redeeming qualities to light or shuffling through snapshots of a life wasted, in ways that a lesser story might employ. What Davies does instead is show readers exactly the bad person Galen Pike is, exactly the hopeless case Miss Haig may be. There is no shining light at the end of this tunnel, but that doesn’t mean redemption is out of reach. Life for Miss Haig carries on after the death of Galen Pike, and it is not unchanged. Pike’s redemption didn’t come from a standard good act in his own life, but the lasting effect his character had on the life of Miss Haig.
While the collection lacks a strong coherent thread the stories all explore elements of a shared human experience and the intensity that can exist there. Davies’ voice is unique and present throughout her stories; she often employs long sentences uninterrupted by commas or other punctuation to achieve a rushed effect. In this she is very successful. Her observations of the human condition, well-crafted stories, emotionally powerful sentences, and overall unique experiences on the page reflect an author who shows great promise.