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'Collected
Stories' by Janette Turner Hospital. University of Queensland
Press, 2001.
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Janet
Turner Hospital's short stories explore life on the margins
of countries and cultures. This collection, a new edition
of a book first published in 1995, comprises Hospital's
two earlier volumes of short stories, Dislocations (1987)
and Isobars (1990), as well as several recent stories
published in a section headed 'North of Nowhere'. It is
no coincidence that all three titles have geographical
associations — an isobar being the imaginary line
connecting air pressure points on a map. Hospital is originally
from Brisbane, but her career as an academic has led her
to Canada, the US, London, Europe and India, and this
nomadic lifestyle has informed much of her writing. In
these stories, characters are rarely depicted in their
native environments, with Hospital writing, for instance,
about Australians in Canada and the US, as well as Americans
in Australia, Canadians in India and Indians living in
Canada.
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The
central theme of Hospital's writing is best encapsulated
in the story 'Litany for the Homeland', in which she reflects
on the wandering life; 'I live at the desiccating edge
of things, on the dividing line between two countries,
nowhere, everywhere, in the margins'. Hospital explores
the anxieties of this nomadic existence, but also revels
in it; 'In the margins one is ignored, but one is free.
That is where the homeland is.'
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The
notion of dislocation extends to time as well as geography,
adding an inflection of magic realism to these stories.
Characters have affairs with strangers who are later revealed
to have died months before. A woman obsessed with drawing
decayed flowers one day neglects to check if her children
are home from school, then receives a phone call from
her daughter who is suddenly revealed to be an adult living
in Paris. The inspiration for these stories becomes apparent
in 'Here and Now', in which time is also dislocated, but
in a less arcane fashion. An Australian woman living in
Canada finds that because of the difference in time zones,
her recently deceased mother has in fact died in the early
hours of tomorrow morning.
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