Greenfly

by Tom Lee

Claustrophobic, intense, troubled, these twelve astonishing stories hold a flare to the strange, elusive corners of our world, past and present; from the United States of the Gold Rush era to the Berlin of today, from Victorian England to the dusty border towns and high cities of modern South America.

A young couple's passionate affair unravels as they wait anxiously in their hotel room for news of a recklessly conceived drug deal.

An academic inherits a set of diaries detailing her great-grandfather's development of a bizarre new field of science; an endeavour which has shocking implications for his young daughter and unfaithful wife.

And in Greenfly, a housebound woman is driven to distraction by the insects infesting her house - putting strain on an already fractured relationship with her partner.

Lee's stories announce the arrival of a writer whose vision is razor sharp, blackly funny and startlingly original.

Genres: Short Stories

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 19, 2009

About the author

For the Australian novelist, see https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Tom Lee is a British novelist and teachers at Goldsmiths University. His debut novel is 'The Alarming Palsy of James Orr'.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of well written, uneasy pieces, ranging in setting from an American wedding to a London swimming pool, and in character from a soap star who has a boob job to a Kosovan refugee. Recommended.

[Michael Martin]

The review title is supposed to be a reference to what has been the most acclaimed story in this collection, Cerology. Ostensibly the record of a scientist's theory of reading patients' head shapes turns out to be the story of his wife's sexual adventures. Tom Lee's stories cover the globe, like the Professor's hands over a skull. From the Mexican Border to London, the writer brings an honest and critical eye to relationships and situations where characters are trapped by culture, personality and physical borders.

My own favourite is The Starving Millions, where a Brit becomes a character in a Richard Ford story. The story does not indulge in easy criticisms of American culture rather it focuses on the visitor's prejudices.

An excellent collection of short stories. Tom Lee is jostling with the greats for a place at the literary table alongside Carver and Pritchett.

[Linda Godsoe Ewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book of short stories that leaves you thinking long after you've read them

[Nick Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in Greenfly are, in my opinion, expertly written, and do exactly what I think short stories ought to do: they give you a glimpse of events in people's lives in few words, and make you feel you've learned something. TL looks at fractured relationships and, in general, refuses to offer us hope of their healing nor, in some cases, any hint of where the fractures started, but allows us to look at present events and make our minds up. What do you make of the narrator in the first story, Berlin, who starts by stating: Caroline, my wife, is feeling unwell. It seems that the city is not agreeing with her. I love the deliberate, disdainful detachment of that it seems, which says it all about how he views his wife in general. And here he is later: I wanted my wife to have an affair so that I could resent her and punish her for it. I wanted to suffer and to make her suffer to prove that we were still in love. If it is a game then it is one I am winning. I love the mix of love and hate here, self-love and self-hate, and solipsistic petulance. 'Normal' people don't act like that, do they? Science and adultery are to the fore in Cerology, genius and weakness, some shocking conclusions drawn from family history. There is more of that in The Ice Palace, and some imagined architecture, a grandiose folly, and the driven nature of the men who built a town and peopled it with ugly things, a tale about self-gratification for the sake of it. The Good Guy seems disappointingly modern, at first, after what has gone before, but it soon gets into its stride, and examines another crumbling relationship, the awkwardness of people who don't change together. I warmed to the main character JP after learning that he had written a dissertation on James Joyce - I probably wouldn't have wanted to read it, but it is these little facts about TL's characters that gets me interested in them from the start. The disconnection between JP and his yobby friends is well done. The ending of this story seems to disappear into nowhere, but leaves the reader thinking, rather than puzzled; this is a very difficult trick for an author to pull off. San Francisco is not set in the city of the title, but in a thin-aired republic undergoing political violence. A couple are trapped in a hotel with a lack of sureness in their relationship, shown by their stunted, repetitive dialogue and their attempts to remain unperturbed about their situation; the whole story keeps the reader on edge. Border, the next story, has a similar setting, and I wondered if they had been part of the same tale, or whether they ought to have been merged, and at the same time enjoyed each story for itself. JJ features a psychiatrist, a traumatised refugee and the duty manager at the hostel in which the refugee lives, in the main, though the doctor's 'other' life, that of his wife and imminent child, are never far from the page; another fracturing of relationships follows, with a demonstration that some relationships are mere matters of chance and opportunity. A very thought-provoking story, which avoids the trap of being about 'issues' to get on with it and just tell the tale. That's something TL has kept to very well with these stories, and I really look forward to more work from him soon.

[Gretel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greenfly is a collection of twelve short stories by an author who definitely knows his craft. Tom Lee's stories are a diverse set and show undeniable talent. He shows instead of telling and even the small things his characters do help to reveal things about their personalities. The stories are succinct with his choice of words holding gravitas. This gets only four stars because I found the stories You Must Change Your Life and The Starving Millions to be weaker and less enjoyable than the others.