=2013 Books Read=

The Three Button Trick and Other Stories
by Nicola Barker

Hi Nicola

How are you? Doing well, I hope. I just finished reading your book The Three Button Trick and Other Stories and it put me in mind to drop you a line. I finished it, cover to cover, in two days. I know the collection isn't long, but I'm not a fast-reader either! So, to read that quickly, I have to be fairly engaged. Well, as it turned out, I also had a lot of time to read yesterday. The hubby and his mates popped down to Atlantic City to see a vintage car show and auction. I don't know why I'm talking in English slang as I'm not English. Probably an after-effect of reading your stories! Anyway, I was alone most of the day so I had plenty of time on my hands.

Well, the weather was fairly awful, nothing like what the forecasters had promised: it was grey and cold as the bottom of a frying pan stashed in an unheated hall pantry. The long pleasant walk in the sun I was so looking forward to taking--that was out. I spent most of the morning in the warm kitchen baking a coconut custard pie for the hubby (his request). It was my first attempt at the coconut custard. Shall I give you the recipe? Let me know. For now, though, here's the key: use coconut milk. You'd think that was a no-brainer but most recipes I've seen tell you to use plain milk.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, between doing a little writing and vacuuming and attending to some intimate matters of  personal hygiene the details of which I'll spare you, I had plenty of time to finish The Three Button Trick and Other Stories. Let me say straight off (well, I'm not quite saying it "straight off,"am I?) that I enjoyed it. Also, I understand how hard it must be to have to defend work that you did twenty years ago. Good grief! I wouldn't line a cat bin with stuff I wrote two decades ago! Thank god, I often console myself with thinking, but I suppose it's something of a silver lining that no one ever thought enough of my writing back then to publish it. For that matter, no one thinks much of it now either, so I guess I'll have that much less to regret twenty years from now. I'm getting off the point again. What I'm trying to say is that no doubt you've grown a lot as a person and a writer in the last couple of decades.

Which is not to say that these stories aren't good. They are. You know, most of them, anyway. No one can hit a home run every time up at the plate, not even one of those muscle-bound guys on steroids. For the most part, the tales here are smart and quirky and slick, pretty much what you might expect from a smart young woman writing for a slick magazine targeted for a readership of other smart young women. I really don't see them as even approaching the work of Martin Amis or Julian Barnes as the copy on the back of your book boldly and immodestly claims. (I know you have nothing to do with that). Maybe you're more recent work justifies such comparisons. I know you've come close to a Man Booker Prize a couple of times by now. Personally I couldn't say. I'm not so sure I'm going to take the time to find out either because you write such super-long novels nowadays and I just find that kind of investment impossible to justify (unless your Tolstoy or something). Well, we'll see. Right now I'm not inclined to giving Darkmans a try, but who knows? I change my mind--what's left of it anyway--a lot.

Back to The Three Button Trick and Other Stories, though. A lot of the stories seems to turn on a clever gimmick of some sort, like the title story, and "Back to Front," where the guy is born with all his insides on the wrong side of his body and "Inside Information" about the unfit, unwed mother with the talking fetus.  G-String would fall into this category. I know it's supposed to be funny, but I kind of thought it was just silly. Others are real gross-outs, like "Symbiosis: Class Cestoda"--a story about a woman with a unique eating disorder involving (yuck!) tapeworms! I'll never forget it, though, especially when I'm eyeballing that extra piece of coconut custard pie. Do you really think it would work, The Tapeworm Diet? Some of these stories wouldn't be out of place in a horror anthology, especially the more literary sort of horror anthology. Hey, you're not related to Clive Barker by any chance, are you?

I think your "Wesley" stories were clearly the best in this collection. They were shocking, too. I'm thinking especially about the one with the finger-eating owl. Sometimes I think your propensity to shock can "cheapen" the literary merits of your story, but I don't think that's the case in the Wesley stories, where the violence seems so much more integrated than it sometimes does. 

Actually, on second-thought, (I told you I changed my mind a lot) I'm thinking again of the title story and I'm going to say that this might, in fact, have been the best story in the book. Aside from the shock, it brings together a lot of what is best in your stories...or what I think is the best of your stories. It's also rather heartwarming, even though it is mainly a story about jealousy and infidelity and selfish people behaving rather badly, it's ultimately a tender-hearted love story. How can that be people might wonder? Well it's hard to explain...and that is what makes it such a good story.

Well, I guess that's about all I have to say about The Three Button Trick and Other Stories and I'm also guessing you're thinking it's more than quite enough! Thanks for keeping me company yesterday. I wish I could offer you a slice of coconut custard pie. It came out super-creamy, super-deeeelish!!! Do let me know if you'd like the recipe.

Take care,
m.