An Ordinary Ecstasy

by Luke Carman

A new collection of stories by the award-winning author of An Elegant Young Man and Intimate Antipathies.

The seven stories that make up An Ordinary Ecstasy explore the lives of people whose days are marked by anxiety and tenderness and exaltation: the musician who rides the winding railway up into the mountains at dusk, the retiree walking the streets of his suburb at dawn, the lovers on the balcony of their hotel room watching surfers cut across the waves, the mates who travel north to Byron Bay in search of healing and revenge. In the panoramic reach of his sentences, the exuberance of his language, the flamboyant gestures and obsessions of his characters, Carman captures the scale of emotion as it grows in intensity, often comically, from the smallest and most ordinary things. His stories may be said to embody a principle observed by the novelist Joseph Conrad: ‘There is not a place of splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only in passing, a glance of wonder.’

Genres: Short Stories

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2022

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are seven stories in Luke Carman's 2022 collection and two of them are novella length, capturing my interest straight away because they are character driven.

Joseph, in 'A Beckoning Candle', is an old bloke who lives in a gentrifying inner suburb of Sydney.  In a story that reminded me not of Philip Salom's style but of his poignant inner urban characters from Waiting (2016); The Returns (2019; or Sweeney and the Bicycles (2022), Joseph is witnessing change in the place where he has lived all his life.  He is losing his memory a little bit too, but he remembers enough to miss the acquaintances from his daily walks and to mourn their old homes coming down to be replaced by apartments.

The noise of building construction is ever present, and on the morning when the story opens, the tradies next door have damaged the postwar sewage system and created a catastrophe in Joseph's back yard. Two weeks ago, they'd knocked down the fence too.

Egged on by Marg 'voicing her concerns' which included a lack of faith in Joseph's capacity to do anything about this fence problem, Joseph had set off to discuss the matter with those responsible.  In a satire which resembles the sort of speech that maiden politicians can make — no tradie I've ever encountered would submit to a flood of rhetoric without interruption — Joseph voices his concerns in response to the cheery reassurance that all will be well.

'If it's all the same to you, and with all due respect, I think I will worry about it.' [...] 'Again, with total appreciation for the task you blokes are required to undertake here, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask, that if you're going to knock a man's fences down, it's fair play to either offer a verbal warning in advance, if the action's intentional, or if it's done in error, to provide him with some timely words of reassurance that the injury isn't done with total disregard for his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. I'm seventy-three years old, I'm not young and fit like you blokes are, and a man my age has concerns, not only for his own safety and the safety of his loved ones, but for the safety of his property too. You blokes might not be aware of this, but we tend, as we get older, to see things from a perspective different to that of a man your age, who's young and in his prime. We old farts don't have the luxury of throwing our hands up in the air when disaster strikes and hoping for a bumper crop come next spring, we can't shrug our shoulders and conclude that here's nothing to worry about in the short term.  The short term is all we have left!' (p.16)

He goes on. He goes on in an extended paragraph of two pages.  He explains that he fears scrappers or carpetbaggers coming in the night and getting curious about a lifetime's worth of tools and equipment in his garage while the tradies have gone home and are sitting on [their] recliners watching the footy. 

'This might sound like spilt milk to you, but for a man my age, on a pension, don't forget, replacing a broken padlock puts me in irreversible arrears, let alone a new lawnmower. My time of acquiring is long gone. I only have what's left to me, and so at my age every loss is eternal.' (p.17)

This comic episode reveals not only the emotional cost of the damage done to the fence, but the poverty our mean-spirited society imposes on elderly people dependent on the pension.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/02/21/a...

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written in overwrought and hyperbolic language, this style took away from the stories .

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luke Carman's prose is dense and evokes clearly the scenes and emotional situations in which the characters find themselves. The long descriptive sentences are almost paragraphs and are peppered with a carnival of words. The local settings made it easy to immerse into the world of each story. A joy to read.

[Adam Byatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life at its most ordinary, and therefore, its most ecstatic. I had the privilege of interviewing Luke for the release of this novel and its profundity comes in examining the normality of everyday lives and marvelling at the unique wonder of someone's life.

[Jenny Toune · Rating 5 out of 5]

a poignant, gruelling, often hilarious, sometimes dark look at the extraordinary lives of ordinary people ... at times a little too polysyllabic, but this is easily overlooked (or left for dictionary referral) in the wonder of each tale.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘My time of acquiring is long gone. I have only what’s left to me and so at my age every loss is eternal.’

So says Joseph, in ‘A Beckoning Candle’, my favourite of the seven short stories which make up this collection. Joseph and his wife Marg live in a part of Sydney being redeveloped. Once familiar scenery, places and people are replaced with frenetic building activity. And so, two weeks after his fence has been damaged, the sewer is damaged, and Joseph finds his yard awash in sewage. In delivering his thoughts to the tradesmen, Joseph speaks for all of us upon whom change is imposed (sometimes accompanied by disaster which is harder to face with age and dwindling resources). As Joseph walked around his neighbourhood, accompanied by memories, in my mind I walked elsewhere with my own memories of people and place, disaster and triumph. Mr Carman has taken me from the world he created for Joseph into my own equivalent. I wonder and worry.

There are six other stories in this collection. I particularly enjoyed the reflection invited in ‘An Ordinary Ecstasy’, where Holly is asked, though a dating app ‘what’s the MOST beautiful THING you’ve ever seen?’ Holly embarks on her own journey through memory as a consequence (as did I). Another story that stayed with me is ‘An Article of Faith’ in which Emma, a journalist, writes an article about Bobby Duncan, the Blacktown citizen of the year. Yes, I’ve known people like Bobby.

That’s the thing that grabbed me in each of Mr Carman’s stories: his characters feel like real people dealing with issues many of us have (or will) deal with. Each story takes us into a recognisable world, one which invites the reader (surely not only me) to reflect on choices, consequences and the passage of time.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Eli McLean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite my preference for Carman's non-fiction, this is still a wonderful collection. Very smart, baroque and refined while still maintaining Carman's trademark working-class scrappiness. Writing comedy is exceedingly difficult to do, but I never once felt in this collection's most outlandish moments that Carman was trying too hard to do it. 'Tears on Main Street' is a highlight, evoking shades of Carman's Western Sydney contemporary Shaun Prescott in its compelling description of the waste of rural Australian towns.

[Jen J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book of 7 short stories is a dense, descriptive and ultimately rewarding experience. All stories are based in Australia's east coast.

[Ethan Dodson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of writing that makes you jealous