The Terrible Event

by David Cohen

From the winner of the Russell Prize for Humour Writing. David Cohen’s most wryly humorous and disturbing work of fiction yet.

A public memorial’s name is changed to avoid any mention of the tragedy it has been set up to commemorate. Two attention-seeking activists campaign against exclusionary policies adopted by the gift shop at a suburban shopping mall. A customer service representative becomes obsessed with a colleague who has worked from home for so long, nobody in the company remembers her. A middle-aged father loses his marriage and falls in love again with a cherished but damagedchildhood toy. An academic’s research into roadside memorials takes a peculiar turn.

David Cohen’s sometimes bizarre yet pitch-perfect stories capture everyday horrorsbut are always shot through with a profound empathy and generosity.

The Terrible Event delivers not just one terrible event, but many events of varying degrees of terrible-ness. Death, destruction, disappearance, decline, defeat – it has something for everyone.

Genres: Short Stories, Humor

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Sheree | Keeping Up With The Penguins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I failed The Terrible Event by going in with my expectations set too high. I’ve read a lot of really good Australian satire and humour lately, so a perfectly good read still feels like it falls a little short in comparison. I still recommend checking it out if you’re looking for bizarre short stories that interrogate the surreality of our increasingly bureaucratised lives.

My full review of The Terrible Event is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.

[Tracey Allen at Carpe Librum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sporting one of the best cover designs of the year so far, The Terrible Event by David Cohen is a collection of short stories promising 'death, destruction, disappearance, decline and defeat' and sounded right up my alley.

A brief word on the cover first. Designed by Josh Durham from Design by Committee, this cover design is immediately eye catching and I keep seeing it popping up everywhere. It really taps into my love of stationery and will no doubt be one of my favourite cover designs for 2023. The mention of parallels between this collection and the work of David Sedaris further stoked my anticipation for this Australian collection.

Containing eight stories in total, I enjoyed the sense of nostalgia that started to build.

"The toy was as addictive as it had been in bygone days. Pulling the string triggered memories of backyard cricket, Choc Wedges and Saturday morning cartoons - the very cartoons that had introduced him to Bugs Bunny in the first place. Those were the days." Page 44-45

The Australian setting and mention of Choc Wedges, Holden Commodores and rippled soled desert boots was ripped right from my own childhood and the sweary dialogue in the story entitled Bugs, was great. Here's our main character in Bugs reminiscing about inheriting his dad's old Olivetti typewriter.

"And when you pressed a key, you could see the type bar strike the paper, leaving behind a black letter or number. Nothing made interesting noises anymore. Nothing had any weight or resistance. Mark recalled the hole punches of his youth, the staplers. Where were they now?" Page 65

Yes, the hole punches!! I think back to how much our desk accessories have changed in my time, with liquid paper in bottles to hole punches, fax machines and staplers. I still have a mini red stapler purchased in 2000 that's so small it takes No. 25 staples and it's stapled thousands of bank statements, travel itineraries and meeting agendas over the years. If you love stationery as much as I do, see my review of Adventures in Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case by James Ward.

Back to the collection, hole punches feature in the aptly named short story Holes, and it was here that I started to notice a few common threads or easter eggs that connect through the collection. I won't include them in my review in case they're spoilers - I'm looking at you Nathan! - but not being a regular reader of short stories, I thought this was cool.

While there's limited time to connect with a character in a short story, character descriptions like this provided a neat shortcut to personality, and I could readily relate:

"Zoran's conversations were limited to two main subjects: cycling and craft beer. I didn't have a problem with that, but he seemed to assume that I was as interested in them as he was. If I tried to steer the conversation in another direction, he'd steer it back, before too long, to one or the other. He showed no particular curiosity about me: I think I was really just a receiver for whatever he wanted to talk about. He might ask me what I'd done on the weekend... but only as an entry point for him to tell me all about the cycling and beer drinking he'd done." Page 99

I have a person JUST LIKE THIS in my life too!

My favourite story in the collection was The Enigma of Keith: Another Memorial, which contained an interesting story about the erection of a fictitious roadside memorial, installed to determine whether the presence of a memorial (white cross, flowers) has any impact on driver speed. Do drivers slow down when they notice a memorial on the side of the road? You'll have to read The Terrible Event to find out!

* Copy courtesy of Transit Lounge *

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absurdist short stories are a literary sweet spot for me. There are some gems in this collection and it builds really nicely (whoever ordered the stories chose exactly right). But there were a couple of stories I found a bit impenetrable which meant it was a mixed read. Still it’s refreshing to see some risk-taking happening in short form #auslit.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this. Eight funny short stories. Human’s thoughts and actions are so complicated and this can be interesting and hilarious in certain way.

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Terrible Event first caught my eye because of the cover. Those ‘SIGN HERE’ stick it notes are ubiquitous, and I liked the spin on using them as a book. This is a collection of short stories about terrible events – some shocking, some sad and some the consequences of age and life. They are wrapped in small events that the main characters tend to get a bit obsessed with, which really made the story for me. It’s quirky and not your usual short story collection.

The Terrible Event contains eight stories, some quite short and others longer, with their own mini chapters. I found I resonated with the longer stories (I love my details) because they delved deeper into the main character’s motivations and foibles. The first story, The Terrible Event: The Memorial, I found quite confronting. The terrible event that led to the memorial is never explained, but as the story continues, there are hints that it wasn’t pretty at all. The ambiguity makes the ending so much more powerful but it will definitely not be for all readers. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue (would all the stories be in this vein?) but I’m glad I did. The next story, Mr Cheerio, is somewhat lighter and more relevant to today – the cost of living, the economy and the eternal human need to one up each other. I loved this story. Bugs is sadder and a little creepy as the narrator finds himself in a strange spiral that just may be related to a childhood toy. The Holes was perhaps my favourite for how relatable it was – work from home, office life and the waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen. The final story, The Enigma of Keith: Another Memorial certainly won’t have me looking at roadside memorials in the same way (although I hope I lift my foot a little).

Overall, the stories are diverse – sometimes dark, sometimes light and witty. The main characters tend to be loners with quirks that put them on the edge of society. Cohen conveys the sense of loneliness well, in addition to how much it bothers his characters (or not), which adds to the sympathy the readers feels for them. The stories also cleverly poke fun at office life, academia, bureaucracy and the rages of people in the suburbs. I enjoyed dipping in and out of these stories, finishing the book in 24 hours. It’s a clever collection verging on the absurd, which just made it more attractive to me.

Thank you to Transit Lounge for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

[Lisa]

The Terrible Event is a collection of eight absurdist stories from Brisbane author David Cohen. 
I'm no Pollyanna, but 'Mattress' uses language a bit too earthy for my taste so I didn't read it.  But the rest of the stories are terrific and the titular story 'The Terrible Event: A Memorial' is brilliant. As the blurb says,  it follows the trajectory of a public memorial that has its name changed to avoid any mention of the tragedy it has been set up to commemorate...

The narrator is in the process of setting up a well-intentioned conference:

The Terrible Event Memorial had been established by the Terrible Event Institute ('the Institute'), which had been set up for the purposes of conducting research into the Terrible Event and other events of a similarly terrible nature.  The Memorial was the 'public face' of the Institute, attracting large numbers of visitors annually.

The theme of the conference was 'The Terrible Event: Remembering the Past, Safeguarding the Future'.  The celebrated Professor N had agreed to deliver the keynote speech.  Professor N, a renowned expert on the Terrible Event, was a highly original thinker and himself a survivor of the Terrible Event — a man seemingly without a trace of bitterness despite having personally endured that ordeal.

Preparations were going smoothly until a member of the public, having seen some early conference-related promotional material that had been circulating — material that referred to The Memorial by its original name, which was, it goes without saying, still in use at the time — lodged a complaint.  This person, who had hitherto been unaware of The Memorial's existence, felt that the original name, which articulated in no uncertain terms the precise nature and location of the event that The Memorial was there to memorialise, was, in their words, 'confronting and emotionally charged.' The Director, who'd never really liked the original name, saw this as the perfect moment to 'change things up'.  (p.3)

The story goes on to deal with another complaint. The memorial is being planned to be a collection of experiences designed to unsettle and disorientate the visitor and thereby force them to reflect more deeply upon the Terrible Event.  Although there was warning signage, there were complaints that it was confronting. This led to another round of inconclusive surveys which nonetheless led to the closure of the offending experiences and plans for a menu of non-confronting but meaningful experiences, from which visitors could choose experiences they could experience individually, at their own pace and desired level of engagement.  Attractive young people with iPads would greet visitors at the door to help them choose...

And then there were complaints about the choice of Professor N as the keynote speaker because his well-known tendency to call a spade a spade, a trait once so admired by his peers, was now regarded as the behaviour of a man desperately out of touch. 

Some years ago, I read Andrea Goldsmith's The Memory Trap (2013) which interrogated the way memorialising can be fraught with difficulty, reminding me of the controversies surrounding memorials for the Holocaust, for 9/11, the Bali Bombings and other atrocities which should not be forgotten.  Cohen's story is a satirical update on the topic that takes account of the power of social media, identity politics and the trauma industry. 

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/06/14/t...

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I often ask myself: had we simply stuck with The Memorial’s original name, would things have taken such a tragic turn?’

A collection of eight short stories, ranging in length from fewer than ten to more than fifty pages. Each story is thought-provoking, but some are more memorable than others.

Yes, these are quirky stories. They are moving and profound, absurd at times and sometimes blackly humorous. The saddest story, for me was ‘Bugs’. A man descends into insanity after his marriage breakdown. At first his childhood rabbit toy, Bugs, brings him joy. Pull Bugs’s string, and he offers one of a series of statements. But over time, Bugs’s repertoire decreases, as does the man’s connection to everyday life.

And then there’s the puzzle of ‘The Holes’. The storyteller is in a work environment which he is told is in transition. His boss isn’t around much, and there is another worker who has worked from home for so long that no-one knows what she looks like.

My favourite story is the last one: ‘The Enigma of Keith: Another Memorial’ in which a fake memorial is installed to determine whether the presence of a memorial (white cross, flowers) has any impact on driver speed. The memorial takes on a life of its own.

And then there’s the accident in ‘Mattress’. Coincidence can be tragic.

The titular story ‘The Terrible Event: A Memorial’ reminds me of the perils of bureaucracy, of how inefficient well-intentioned collective processes can be.

Each of the stories, regardless of length, is totally self-contained. Yes, occasionally I would have liked more, to know what might happen next, but I didn’t need it.

This is the first time I have read any of Mr Cohen’s work: he has two novels ‘Disappearing off the Face of the Earth’ and ‘Fear of Tennis’, and another collection of short stories ‘The Hunter’ (winner of the 2019 Russell Prize for humour writing) that I have added to my reading list.

If you enjoy quirky short stories, you may enjoy this collection as much as I did.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore David Cohen’s inane sense of humour and in his latest collection of short stories The Terrible Event (Transit Lounge Publishing 2023), he is absolutely on fire with sparkling wit, strange, outlandish and mesmerising tales, stories of hilarity and sardonic, satirical ridiculousness, and as is his trademark style, deconstructing the absurdity of bureaucracy, red tape and the rules of life engagement, which in his hands become meaningless examples of the irrationality and farcicality of life.

An academic’s research into roadside memorials takes on a life of its own. A circular argument erupts over the avoiding of naming a public memorial to avoid any mention of the tragedy it is memorialising. We enter a world in which the homeless ‘culvert people’ are discriminated against. A man’s life is summarised in a few short chapters, prefaced around walking. A childhood doll gains a new life as its previous (now adult) owner’s best friend.

The collection is chock full of ‘terrible events’, as the name implies: simple furniture removal gone wrong, bad decisions, sliding door moments, misunderstandings, deliberate misrepresentations, accusations. One of my favourites is about a customer service representative who finds employment in a weird little office, job-sharing with a mysterious woman who still works from home (though it is no longer required) and has such a nebulous presence that he wonders if she even exists.

Funny writing is the hardest to do well, and David Cohen has nailed it again. If you enjoyed his previous collection, The Hunter and Other Stories of Men, you will love this book.

[Gretchen Bernet-Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of humour, of sadness, of the bizarre twists in life, and how a small thing can be taken and expanded until it offers an unexpected and fresh new viewpoint. For example in the case of “The Enigma Of Keith: Another Memorial” who hasn’t wondered about those road-side tributes? Who put them there, who visits them? Each short story is an intriguing literary journey down the rabbit hole or, to use a musical analogy, a guitar riff which shakes old books off the library shelf. There’s the beautiful little zap of “Andrew” or the insights of “A History Of Walking” and I have never read anything similar to “Mr Cheerio” a bloke who “During the day he’d sit on an old picnic chair just inside the culvert’s downstream entrance” and greet people as they walked by. An author who comes close to David Cohen is Kelly Link an American short story writer, both have that literary quirk. From my perspective David Cohen has created something different for various reading generations and I admire its perception, irreverence and dash of madness. I really enjoyed reading this slim volume and think Cohen has written a genuinely different exploration of the Australian short story form.

[Emkoshka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best short story collection I've read, but still enjoyable, especially if you like absurdist humour in the vein of the TV mockumentaryUtopia. David Cohen is very good at skewering the meaningless, mindless bureaucracy of office jobs but also exposing the pathos in those situations. 'The Holes' and 'The Enigma Of Keith: Another Memorial' did a beautiful job at exploring blackly humorous situations and the respective obsessions of the lonely narrators in each. You'll never look at a roadside memorial in the same way.

[Chelsea Pinkard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really enjoyed this one! I’ve never been one for short stories or anthologies BUT this one caught my eye in an op-shop literally this afternoon (especially the first/titular story) and I spent the whole evening binge reading them. Not my usual cup of tea but I loved it anyway!

[Kerry Renshaw · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dnf - one chapter and called it - not for me

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. Not enjoyable at all.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the greatest books I've ever read, wonderfully weird and hilarious.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this volume of quirky stories but would’ve loved it more if I had your sense of humour David Cohen. While reading, I kept imaging the voice of David Mitchell.