Dressing-Up Box

by David Constantine

THE FIFTH COLLECTION FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR David Constantine - author of 'In Another Country', the story that inspired the film '45 YEARS'. Against the backdrop of war, a group of children barricade themselves in an abandoned townhouse, cherishing what's left of their innocence with the help of a dressing-up box... A deep-sea diver takes to being suspended for hours at a time on the end of a line not long enough to reach the seabed... An ageing widower moves into the shed at the end of his garden to plan out his 'endgame' surrounded by a lifetime's worth of hoarded curiosities... The characters in David Constantine's fifth collection are all in pursuit of sanctuary; the violence and mendacity of the outside world presses in from all sides be it the ritualised brutality suffered by children at a Catholic orphanage, or the harrowing videos shared among refugees of an atrocity 'back home'. In each case, the characters withdraw into themselves, sometimes abandoning language altogether, until something breaks and they can retreat no further. In Constantine's luminous prose, these stories capture such moments in all their clarity; moments when an entire life seems to hang in the balance, the past's betrayals exposed, its ghosts dragged out into the daylight; moments in which the possibility of defiance and redemption is everything. 'Precise in their intensity, unsettling, suddenly and unexpectedly luminous, these stories will stay with you and unfurl within you.' - Lucy Caldwell 'A beautifully crafted tender, evocative collection. Full of wisdom and light.' - Irenosen Okojie 'David Constantine's fifth collection of stories is a fierce and tender meditation on our struggle to live - a lyrical and plainspoken portrait of humanity at its pernicious worst and its suffering, creative, resilient best.' - Carys Davies 'David Constantine is fearless. His work is dark and daring while, at turns, also humorous and tender

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

Paperback

About the author

Born in 1944, David Constantine worked for thirty years as a university teacher of German language and literature. He has published several volumes of poetry, most recently, Nine Fathom Deep (2009). He is a translator of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. In 2003 his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter Than Air won the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. His translation of Goethe's Faust, Part I was published by Penguin in 2005; Part II in April 2009. He is also author of one novel, Davies, and Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton. His four short story collections are Back at the Spike, the highly acclaimed Under the Dam (Comma, 2005), and The Shieling (Comma, 2009), which was shortlisted for the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Constantine's story 'Tea at the Midland' won the BBC National Short Story Award 2010, and won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award in 2013 for the collection (Comma Press, 2012). He lives in Oxford where, for ten years, he edited Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen (until 2011). David's short story 'In Another Country' has been adapted into 45 Years - a major Film4-funded feature film, directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Tom Courtenay & Charlotte Rampling. This film won two silver bear awards at the Berlinale International Film festival in February 2015. David is also the author of the forthcoming novel, released by Comma Press, The Life-Writer.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent collection, allthough at the start I thought it was good but not as good as previous collections. But then I read 'bREcCiA', a sweeping rush of complex information and imagery beautifully done (it describes a book of collages that somehow compresses events and meanings from disparate sources and times, to the narrator a series of half-revelations and realisations, something large and all encompassing about to be uncovered). Other stories brim with tough, unpalatable things - in one a sadist priest torments the children in his care, another charts the fate of a refugee - still others have mundanity interrupted by past events or lovers turning up, or by visions. Ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. He does say in one story that the writer under discussion wasn't very good at endings, and there is some of that here, many end without 'closure'. For me, not a problem - Constantine at full pelt is something special, I sat back and admired, engaged, felt.

[Ellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

#AD: gifted product

I was provided with a free e-copy of this book by the publishers, Comma Press, in exchange for my honest review.

This review also published on my blog.

I didn’t really know what to expect going into this book. To be entirely honest, I’d actually forgotten that it was a short story collection rather than a novel. Despite loving short stories, I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed when the first story ended and I was presented with a new set of characters, because I was burning to read more about the children in the first story. The opening story is where the collection takes its name from: a group of children are living in a large house, with an almost military-style guard rota in place. Quite why these children are here alone, and why they need to guard the house from the adults outside is a mystery, and it was a mystery I wanted solving! But no, I was whisked away to a new setting, new characters, with just a thematic overlap to tie me back to the story I wanted so desperately to read more of.

Some of the stories definitely stood out to me more than others. The Dressing-Up Box, the first story in the collection was one such story. When I Was A Child, the story of the Catholic orphanage where the children are abused also stood out to me as a particularly dark exploration of the themes recurring throughout the collection, and again — I wanted to read more, I wanted to know these children would be saved. But there’s no real salvation in most of these stories. The other story that I remember standing out to me the most was Ashton and Elaine, the story of a young black boy found and taken in by a white family. All the characters in this collection share a need for sanctuary, and some of them tentatively find something they could call safe, or home, while others are left searching. The other recurring theme throughout this collection is the theme of withdrawal, which I noticed in varying degrees throughout the stories. In some, like Ashton and Elaine, where Ashton refuses to speak for a long time, this withdrawal is obvious, but in some other stories it was much more subtle, and sometimes I actually struggled to see how a story slotted into the wider collection.

These stories are, generally, quite dark, bordering on gothic in places. I felt like David Constantine’s writing style really suited the dark aspect of the collection. Many of the stories did blur into one another, however, and there are a few titles that I couldn’t tell you anything about the story they belong to. Sometimes the characters seemed flat, and with this lack of depth in the characters I struggled to stay engaged through some of the stories. This is definitely a collection for when you’re able to give it your full attention, because I found myself latching onto distractions more than the stories in some parts, which I will admit I am often liable to do.

Review also posted on The StoryGraph.

Continue reading on my blog.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am extremely lucky in the quality of the books donated to the charity stores I go to, if it wasn't for them I would have missed out on many wonderful authors and books. David Constantine's 'The Dressing Up Box' is just the latest. This is a beautiful and powerful collection of stories. Two in particular 'The Dressing Up Box' and 'When I Was a Child' just blew my mind. TDUB is about a group of refugee children banding together and creating a new family and preserving an innocence and decency amidst the collapse of all order and hideous danger. WIWAC is a story of the ritualised abuse of children in a catholic orphanage but also if defiance and survival. Despite their grim settings both stories can be described as beautiful.

All of Mr. Constantine's stories are beautiful, powerful and wonderful. If you have not read anything by David Constantine then I recommend you put him near the top of your TBR list. I am now going to read more of his fantastic stories.

[Ross Jeffery · Rating 5 out of 5]

What you can be guaranteed with David Constantine is a fabulous story, masterfully told – and this can be said for his latest offering The Dressing-Up Box – which left me enraptured and stunned at the sheer brilliance on show.

Comma Press are a publisher whom I love, they continue to churn out top quality short story anthologies and the odd collection too (in these climes it seems to fall to the independent presses to give the hungry short story market what they crave) and with The Dressing-Up Box they have produced a magnificent book, both inside and out.

There are so many great stories in this collection, but I’m going to focus on two that really were outstanding, on a number of levels.

The opening story and the title story of the collection – The Dressing-Up Box is set against the backdrop of war, an almost apocalyptic type of scenario, where we find a group of children have taken over an abandoned townhouse – where the chiefs of this rabble, the oldest by birthright rule over the younger children in their care, that is until a little boy called Monkey arrives and they discover The Dressing-Up Box. Things quickly change with Monkey’s introduction (and what an introduction) and the dynamic shifts, becoming something more akin to a potent and beguiling cocktail made from the remnants of William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies‘ and J.M. Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan‘ (the lost boys).

Constantine also keeps the dread, fear and tension pumping throughout the story, with visitors appearing at the door, or armed men trundling past in cars. Some of these people also try to get into the house, peering and leering through the mailbox – the final visitor to the house would appear to have sinister intentions, those that are best left unsaid, and they do remain unsaid, but Constantine’s deft touch makes this visitor and his intentions hit home like a hatchet to the head and literally made my skin crawl.

The children have been cherishing and holding onto what’s left of their childhoods as best they can as they are faced with such chaos and anarchy raging outside. They have been using the dressing-up box to reenact plays and entertain each other – but now they are scared, their supplies are running out and there are wolves at the door. They need to act fast, they need to survive, but can they escape whatever evil waits beyond the door?

*

When I Was A Child – is a brutally, visceral example of how a short story can overtake a reader, how it can overwhelm them with feelings, drowning them in beautifully tragic prose. With When I Was A Child Constantine should be championed for shining his bright light into the darkness, suffering and systemic abuse that took place at the orphanages of the Brothers and Sisters of Mercy and Nazareth House.

They are names I know all too well. Unfortunately. When I started this story I had no idea of the emotional impact that they would have on me, and I wasn’t even the one that suffered at their hands. I’ve been living within this shadow for a long time, it had been draped over my family for the whole of my childhood. You see, my father, he was interned at Nazareth House, with his brother. He was a orphan, his father took off when they were young, and his mother was committed to a mental hospital, unfit to look after her sons.

My father used to talk about his time there, about the abuse that took place, both physical and mental. One time he was locked in a cupboard for being naughty (taking second helpings when he was hungry), panic set in, and he threw up after hyperventilating – when the nuns came to get him out, they made him eat his sick back down, to keep the sin that corrupted him inside where it belonged, as not to contaminate anyone else they’d said.

There are probably other unspeakable things that happened during his time with the Sisters of Mercy – who he said had no mercy whatsoever. But these are his ghosts he needs to exorcise – but I firmly believe that Constantine’s story can help him with these and many others who suffered at their hands.

‘A girl with red hair, for example – with the remnants of red hair, to be exact, the lovely fullness of it having been cropped because the Devil was in it – Jezebel, the Sisters had named her, she had a birthmark over her heart where the Devil had kissed her, and for her own good, the saving of her immortal soul, they would beat her often and long with a strap, a cane, a chair leg or whatever else came to hand – this child of fourteen, insolence incarnate, kept up a sardonic commentary to left and right, never turning her head and never the least movement of her lips betraying her.’
Constantine delivers a remarkable expose on the abuse suffered by children at the hands of these monsters of men and women – he’s able to delve deep within the institution of this abuse, guiding the reader through the most traumatic of events, but never does this story turn into a pity parade. The characters are strong in the face of such corruption of their youth and Constantine’s prose is delicate and assured. His words are carefully thought out and planned to perfection, bringing healing for those that take the journey and hope for those who survived.

A note from my father who also received a copy of this book – When I was A Child is shattering. One of the most shattering stories I’ve ever read. Constantine was able to sum up my darkest thoughts, feelings and inescapable dread of that place and those people – it’s as if he took all my memories and arranged them more clearly than I ever could. And for that I thank him, I now have something to share with my friends and family who enquire what my childhood was like, and for this I will forever be in his debt. Thank you David.
The Dressing-Up Box is masterful storytelling from a true colossus of the art form. Constantine’s collection at its heart is about people. What shapes them, what moulds them , what transforms them into what they’ve now become – some are searching, some are hoping and some are trying to escape, figuring out what they must face, to eventually break free.

The Dressing-Up Box is one of the most accomplished short story collections in years. Pick up a copy and discover the brilliance that resides within for yourself.

[Ellie Hawkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sixteen stories in this collection are powerful, both individually and when taken as a whole. Constantine is a remarkable writer, able to blend personal, intimate moments with wider political implications, zooming in and out of the human experience in a seamless manner. There were two or three stories which didn’t grab me as strongly, but I suspect this is at least partly because Constantine’s work requires quite intense concentration; it seems to me to be the kind of book that would reward careful reading and rereading. Having said that, when I tried to pick out a couple of favourite stories, I ended up choosing half of them!

The opening story, ‘The Dressing-Up Box’, is stunning. The premise of a group of children forming their own mini society has, of course, been done before, but what struck me here was the trust placed in the children by the author – there is no Lord of the Flies anarchy here; instead, acceptance and empathy govern the children’s actions. When the newcomer, Monkey, discovers the treasure trove of dressing-up clothes beneath the floorboards, the delight and excitement is palpable. The way in which the children are able, even in these extreme circumstances, to let their imaginations run riot, and not to lose that sense of wonder, is beautifully depicted. As a first introduction to Constantine’s writing, it blew me away, and reminded me of the power of the short story form.

As I mentioned, there were several other stories that really stood out for me. ‘Siding with the Weeds,’ in which Joe visits his old friend Bert, who is now more or less living in a shed at the end of his garden, is such a subtly surprising story, full of gorgeous nuggets of prose – when Bert reveals the full version of the ‘beautiful clean thought’ he had started to write down, I honestly felt something break in my chest. Constantine’s writing contains many of these moments, heartbreaking in their truth and beauty. In ‘The Diver’, Lucy accompanies her father on one of his expeditions, and the events that unfold perfectly encapsulate those moments of near-trauma that can mark us almost as much as the real thing.

Constantine’s work is also timely. In ‘Rivers of Blood’, two elderly people reflect on their experiences of the demonstrations resulting from Powell’s infamous speech, and in ‘Seeking Refuge,’ Fahrid struggles to move on from what is happening back in the country he fled. In ‘bREcCiA’, the strange book made up of collages of images and texts, which so captivates the protagonist, seems to encompass the entire modern world in its pages, showing the true scope of Constantine’s concerns.

‘When I Was a Child’ is perhaps the most emotionally powerful piece in the collection, describing the covert horrors of life in the House of the Brothers and Sisters of Mercy, an orphanage. What happens with White Star is chilling – I shall say no more here, but Father Dominic is a dark, dark villain. Even in this bleak story, though, there is a hint of hope at the end. This is brought to the fore in the final story in the collection, ‘Ashton and Elaine,’ a deeply moving piece which brings the book in a full circle back to the optimism we can have in the goodness of children. It is a cliche to label them our hope for the future, but Lord knows in these times, our hope has to come from somewhere.

I was captivated by this collection, which takes the reader on a journey between emotion and intellect, politics and the personal, and I would recommend it to anyone who reads in order to think more deeply about ourselves as human beings. It is powerful stuff.

[The Armchair Nihilist · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Constantine is an unfairly overlooked writer probably due to the challenging nature of his work. His prose explores the poetic in everyday life while raising questions that often go unanswered as if he is inviting us to bring our own meaning to the text. All this requires a bit of effort on the part of the reader and it can be either engaging or alienating depending on the story and our reaction to it.

In the opening piece of his latest collection, “The Dressing Up Box” (TDUB), a group of children in an unidentified conflict zone huddle together for survival in an abandoned house. In the last story, “Ashton and Elaine”, a disturbed young orphan boy is nursed back to health by a farming family in the north of England. This final story may be a continuation of the first with one of the children now a relocated refugee - or maybe not: ambiguity is a recurring feature of this writer’s work.

In between is a varied collection of stories some of which work better than others. In “The Phone Call” a marriage is destabilised by a brief encounter with a voice from the past; a couple of misanthropic old codgers grumble philosophically in “Siding With the Weeds”; “Autumn Lady’s Tresses” is a poignant lament for the lost landscapes of youth; and in “Breccia” the protagonist develops an unhealthy obsession with a voluminous cryptic scrapbook. I waited for this particularly intriguing premise to develop further but the story fizzles out to an unresolved conclusion. With so much open to interpretation other readers will likely devise their own meanings and that may well be the point.

I’ve read a couple of Constantine’s short story compilations as well as his novel “The Lifewriter” and based on that I don’t think TDUB is his most accessible work. If you are new to this writer I suggest that you instead start with “In Another Country”, a compilation of his previously published stories (which includes one of my own favourites, “An Island”). If you’re already familiar with Constantine you’ll want to read TDUB anyway, but you may find it a bit uneven compared to his previous work. A mixed bag but still worth trying a few on to see how they fit.

[Luca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though we can define this book as a collection of short stories, it is fair to say that those stories a slightly different than what you will usually expect.

This book opens windows into many different lives, you are going to fall into them and once there, you can follow the plot while you try to arrange the information you discover along the way. Not all the story have a clear start or end and every reader will fill the gaps in the story with his own thoughts and have a very unique and personal experience of the book.
The author has an incredible ability to make each story different and vivid in its own way and this variety makes the book exciting to read. I am not an expert novel reader and at times I felt that this book was too advanced for me and that I could not fully enjoy its complexity.

On the one side, this book can be hard for an inexperience reader and some of the stories are hard to penetrate. On the other, the stories are short and with a bit of effort, everyone will find the gold nuggets that are hidden between the pages and when you will find one the effort will be greatly repaid.

If you want a beautiful collection of short stories to read slowly and thoughtfully this is the book for you.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The third collection of David’s stories I have read and it didn’t disappoint. Beautiful.

[Dominique · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[theshortstory.co.uk (TSS Publishing)]

"These are stories that fill you up and empty you out all at once, that burrow into your consciousness, and in the end leave you feeling as if you've just woken up from an inexpressibly sad but beautiful dream..."

See Becky Tipper's full review at: https://theshortstory.co.uk/short-sto...