The Keys to Hell

by Jo Randerson

Unsettling yet thought-provoking musings on religion, relationships, and responsibility intermingle in this collection of weird and wonderful cautionary tales.


One day amongs the rhododendrons --
Kolesnikov --
The cow's story --
Being sure about friends --
Story for my brother --
My four wolves --
Orphan --
Gazelles --
The hag (or the runt) --
Piggy. wk --
This life of mine --
The keys to hell.

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[Eleanor Toland · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slender, lime-green volume contains short stories that could be very loosely described as fables. A cow philosophises. A woman pleads with her dead son. A girl argues with Saint Peter. A demon menaces a mediaeval town. A shoemaker is hounded by a succubus. But unlike the traditional fable, very few of these stories have simple or obvious morals. They have more in common with what the Japanese call a 'kōan', being for the most part troublingly ambiguous rather than didactic. For the most part, anyway. The story with the shoemaker gets ridiculously heavy handed at the end.

The stories are written in such a way that they seem deliberately designed to tease or provoke the reader. They're very often shaggy dog stories, dragging their point out for pages before reaching an ending either vague, abrupt or both. A few, like "Orphan" don't end at all, at least in any traditional sense. I much preferred Jo Randerson's shorter, more piquant first collection The Spit Children, but nevertheless this volume has some highlights, particularly "The Hag, or the Runt" and the titular story "The Keys to Hell".