Good, work, Guy, a straight 'A' for your homework and a nice cheque for £750 into the bargain! Guy worked with me on Writing Skills, sending marvellous stories to me at level one of the OCA degree course, which he's still pursuing. But in the meantime, he's honed one of his stories to perfection and has rightly landed himself third place in the inaugural Costa Short Story Award, alongside writers that include Chioma Okereke and Sally Vickers.
Guy Le Jeune's story, Small Town Removal is about a man who returns to his home town for the funeral of his father. This is a theme that has been written about many times before. Michael, the protagonsit opens a packet of the Tayto crisps he ate as a child, and memories flow into him. This is also a technique that has also been used more times than any of us can count. But neither of these things matter because Guy has put some simple but effective strategies into place to draw us into his deeply moving story.
Description of narrative is something the OCA course Writing Skills highlights. It recommends the writer uses all the 5 of their senses when describing...although I recommend adding a pinch of the 6th sense, too.
The first sense that Guy uses is the sensation of touch, in the form of that blistering, prickly feeling of being too hot. From this, he creates the mood he uses throughout the story. The unusual heat of a summer's day crafts a mood the reader can wallow in...
Guy Le Jeune's story, Small Town Removal is about a man who returns to his home town for the funeral of his father. This is a theme that has been written about many times before. Michael, the protagonsit opens a packet of the Tayto crisps he ate as a child, and memories flow into him. This is also a technique that has also been used more times than any of us can count. But neither of these things matter because Guy has put some simple but effective strategies into place to draw us into his deeply moving story.
Description of narrative is something the OCA course Writing Skills highlights. It recommends the writer uses all the 5 of their senses when describing...although I recommend adding a pinch of the 6th sense, too.
The first sense that Guy uses is the sensation of touch, in the form of that blistering, prickly feeling of being too hot. From this, he creates the mood he uses throughout the story. The unusual heat of a summer's day crafts a mood the reader can wallow in...
There is heat, here in this small town. A dead heat. It sulks in the valley, as
blue storms build, up beyond the grey ridge. It is the kind that clings to you
and smothers your breath...
However, describing via the senses is an extremely responsive area of writing, and it’s not good to overwhelm the reader with too much sound. The wise author knows that a little can go a long way...although he doesn't tell us to smell the brackish water, we can almost do so without his bidding ...
Down here by the canal there is no wind. Along the lane, the thick water slides
past cows stretched out on tufts of sun-shorn rushes and wet meadow. The
banks are crumbling, spilling earth into the cut. The water is sluggish out
among the fields, but closer to the town it has the pace of tides.
Guy uses the sense of taste to introduce us to the character's memories...
He sits again and pours the cider into the glass, listening to the ice creak and shatter. A wasp flits around the bottle top as Michael drinks. He opens the Tayto and he is back again in a cheese and onion childhood.
The main street is still. No vehicles move in either direction. The shops close, blinds are drawn, the pub doors shut. People line the street. They wait together, hands crossed. Michael can smell tobacco smoke from across the road. The cigarettes are stubbed. Heads turn to face down towards the bridge.
As well as using smell in the above passage, notice also the use of hearing – that is the suggestion that everything has gone quiet.
Guy's use of the sense hearing continues to build tension into the story. From the start, we're introduced to the sound of the weir. At this point in the story, we've moved away from the canal into the centre of town, but the sound has followed the protagonist, Michael. eating into his senses...
Michael can hear the canal weir now. It is the first time he has ever noticed the noise from the main street. It reminds him of radio static and John Joseph chasing the airwaves for dance music on Radio Éireann. Michael remembers the dials on the radio, the amber glow of the valves, his father searching up and down around the word Athlone on the backlit Bakelite.
Guy has rightly had this great story placed in a prestigious award. He's written about a common event and the sorts of memories ordinary people can identify and empathise with. But he's presented them to the reader in a heightened form that is unforgettable, using that '6th sense' I mentioned earlier – in Small Town Removal, Guy has created a personal voice that feels very intimate. This reinforces the mood and atmosphere he's already built.
All of this careful work, constructing a story word by word, has resulted in triumph. Guy says;
“I’m delighted and a little amazed to be shortlisted for the inaugural Costa Short Story Award. I only started writing seriously two years ago, so being shortlisted for such a prestigious award is extraordinary and rather humbling. ‘Small Town Removal’ was inspired by the real events of a summer’s afternoon in Ballinamore, County Leitrim, a place where I draw a lot of my ideas from. It is a area where stories and characters seem to be written into the clay of Sliabh An Iarainn. I owe a debt of gratitude to the words and genius of John McGahern, whose works brought me to Leitrim and the slopes of the Iron Mountain. The characters and location of ‘Small Town Removal’ are central to my novel in progress, entitled ‘On a Hammered Copper Hillside’.”
I'm delighted too, but I'm not all that amazed.