by Mark Haddon
Genre trappings add flavour to literary collection
The stories in Mark Haddon's most recent collection are big: frequently long, centering on the subjects of death, mercy killing, violence, suicide and redemption. However much they yearn for connection, his protagonists, isolated emotionally ("Breathe", "The Weir") and physically ("The Island", "The Woodpecker and the Wolf", "The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear"), must concentrate on survival.
As such, these stories combine the deep observation of literary fiction with the action focus one typically associates with genre. Indeed, in his mission to spin a good yarn Haddon often utilizes genre-based forms—Victorian adventure/explorer accounts, Greek mythology, space narratives—that veer into the fantastical.
The genre trappings of some of the stories may be tired, but they lend the stories a sense of familiarity in which difficult truths may be plumbed. I'm reminded of the dictum that in stories stereotypes are never the problem. The problem is to get the stereotypes right.