Night geometry and the Garscadden trains Book

A.L. Kennedy's Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains is a pure heart book for me.

I write for a living (not every hour of my gig, but enough that it's the primary reason I have the job) and, like any art, when you make your own, you're more likely to see the internal mechanics rather than simply having a surface level enjoyment of the medium. My brother, a career musician, can't listen to songs without hearing theory and chord progressions. As for me, it's rare that I read a book without seeing plot structure, character development and literary theories, but A.L. Kennedy's first short story collection was able to bypass all that, taking the stories from my head and placing them into my heart.

These stories do not reflect my life. Many are about lonely people, infidelity and broken families (whereas I come from a loving family, am happily married and have strong friendships). There's nothing particularly exciting about the plot lines or charming in the characters, and while I've fallen off later A.L. Kennedy works (not enough heart and too much hedonism for my taste), I still love many of the stories from Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains. I even look at the lines from this collection that spoke to me and think about how they could be written better, only to come back and realize their beauty as is. Take this line from the title story: "Nothing makes you feel more stupid than finding out you were wrong when you thought you were loved." There's nothing complicated about that line'no alliteration or stellar metaphor. Even the structure is wrong, slightly off-kilter, yet that's what makes it work. In the everyday world, that last word should be 'right,' but if it is 'loved' (which it is), that section should come before the 'wrong' section in the sentence structure, yet it's all those things done wrong that makes the sentence work. Or at least for me it does. Anyway, enough of this head nonsense. I don't feel like I'm getting my appreciation across in this garbled review.

"Star Dust" is my favorite short story. Not just from this collection; we're talking favorite, period, but I can't tell you why. It's just an old lady talking about how people assume she's senile. She takes pictures and thinks about the movies she would make for the normal people she has known in her life. Yup, that's it, and I absolutely treasure it. It's not all that quotable either (though there is an interesting section about missing the best parts of your mother because she was busy raising you and you were too young to know better), but that story speaks to parts of me I can't even explain, which is maybe why I love it so much. Here's the thing: You could go out right now and pick up this collection, read through my recommended pieces'including "Sweet Memory Will Die," "The Role of Notable Silences in Scottish History" and the title story'and I wouldn't be surprised if you found them too everyday and too boring, because I know it's not for everyone, and if I'm honest, that makes me love the collection all the more. Five stars.