Passive Infinitive
Nicole Flattery, Show Them a Good Time
Bloomsbury, 256pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781526611901
reviewed by Magdalena Miecznicka
Even if the details of their adventures vary throughout the eight short stories comprising Nicole Flattery's debut collection, Show Them a Good Time, her protagonists bear a striking resemblance to one another. Not only are they (with one exception) relatively young women from small-town backgrounds – Flattery is 29 and from Kinnegad, Co Westmeath in Ireland – they also share a propensity to float through life like sticks thrown into a stream, barely resisting the things that happen to them. The waters are often rough.
Work is a recurring theme. Whether the workplace is an office (‘Hump'), a garage (‘Show them a Good Time’), an American TV company (‘Track’), or a university (‘Abortion, a Love Story’ and ‘Parrot’), the gist is the same: work is a soulless space of irrational activity and toxic power relationships. Apart from providing a very basic income, it doesn't bring any personal fulfilment. It does, however, provide fertile ground for problematic flirtations. A young woman gets entangled with her boss (‘Hump’) or her university tutor (‘Abortion, a Love Story’), both of whom plainly abuse their power over her. Romantic relationships outside work aren't much better. The stories’ protagonist is often desired for her body, of course; but her humility also seems to be part of the appeal. Whether the men want to cheat on her, look down on her, allow for her to be degraded by their friends, persuade her to have an abortion she's not sure about, or are just old and decrepit while she is young and attractive, they won't be gainsaid. The woman in Flattery’s fiction lives in a world of permanent passive infinitive: she never really does anything; everything is done to her instead. This effect is greatly served by the author’s oneiric and surrealistic narrative style.
In ‘Track’, which won the 2017 White Review Short Story Prize, the main character's modesty is treated as a token of Irishness by her New York City TV-star boyfriend and his celebrity friends. ''You're very sweet,' he told me. ‘I guess it was true – I could be sweet. I was Irish. I didn't want to rely on it too heavily, do that whole bit, degrade myself.'' But degrading herself is just what she does. The tone, downbeat and sardonic, recalls Michel Houellebecq: 'I wasn't helping by staying up all night, leaving long, anonymous messages on the forum that hated my boyfriend. I'd established a lot of friendships on there, made meaningful connections.' At other times, the author’s combination of playful humility and dazzling intelligence is reminiscent of Grace Paley.
Flattery's protagonist won't object to wrongs done to her, but somehow all the bumps of life will leave her unchanged. As if she wasn't really there, but outside of herself, watching. Why? Could it be that the real damage was done to her a long time ago? Might what she experiences now be only a repetition, fundamentally benign, because degradation and pain have already trodden their paths in her soul, and a long time ago? Take, for example, this line, from the title story:
We are not told who had treated the narrator like shit, or when. Many of these stories hint at challenging childhoods. Challenging through poverty. Through the feminine experience. Because of the suffocating atmosphere of small-town life, or because of toxic relations at home. One of the characters 'goes wild' with her mother. Another is allowed by her parents to get together with an adult man when she's 14. One of the women loses her mother when she's a child. Other traumas are obliquely hinted at.
The only relationships that give hope of fulfilment, or at least of being understood, are the ones with fellow sufferers – female friends, or a sister. As for the characters’ occupations, the uniquely worthwhile one is art. In ‘Abortion, a Love Story’ two students of what is probably Trinity College in Dublin, one having a 'liaison' with her married professor, the other one sustaining herself on a sort of prostitution, put on a play about their experiences, and this empowers them just the way that telling one's story is supposed to do. This is what the narrators' feisty humour and irony are for: they are the woman's true revenge. She might not have much agency in the events of her own life, but she is surely in control of all the comments.
This collection can be read in at least three ways: as a commentary on the female condition – in contemporary Ireland, but why not elsewhere too; as a study of a certain type of personality (difficult childhood, problems with self-esteem); or as a depiction of the artistic soul. In every one of these ways the stories offer many ingenious insights, compelling characters, and some seriously good sentences: 'Whenever her new friends asked about growing-up in the countryside, she said, “I had a lot of authentic experiences. Rivers. Trees.”’
Work is a recurring theme. Whether the workplace is an office (‘Hump'), a garage (‘Show them a Good Time’), an American TV company (‘Track’), or a university (‘Abortion, a Love Story’ and ‘Parrot’), the gist is the same: work is a soulless space of irrational activity and toxic power relationships. Apart from providing a very basic income, it doesn't bring any personal fulfilment. It does, however, provide fertile ground for problematic flirtations. A young woman gets entangled with her boss (‘Hump’) or her university tutor (‘Abortion, a Love Story’), both of whom plainly abuse their power over her. Romantic relationships outside work aren't much better. The stories’ protagonist is often desired for her body, of course; but her humility also seems to be part of the appeal. Whether the men want to cheat on her, look down on her, allow for her to be degraded by their friends, persuade her to have an abortion she's not sure about, or are just old and decrepit while she is young and attractive, they won't be gainsaid. The woman in Flattery’s fiction lives in a world of permanent passive infinitive: she never really does anything; everything is done to her instead. This effect is greatly served by the author’s oneiric and surrealistic narrative style.
In ‘Track’, which won the 2017 White Review Short Story Prize, the main character's modesty is treated as a token of Irishness by her New York City TV-star boyfriend and his celebrity friends. ''You're very sweet,' he told me. ‘I guess it was true – I could be sweet. I was Irish. I didn't want to rely on it too heavily, do that whole bit, degrade myself.'' But degrading herself is just what she does. The tone, downbeat and sardonic, recalls Michel Houellebecq: 'I wasn't helping by staying up all night, leaving long, anonymous messages on the forum that hated my boyfriend. I'd established a lot of friendships on there, made meaningful connections.' At other times, the author’s combination of playful humility and dazzling intelligence is reminiscent of Grace Paley.
Flattery's protagonist won't object to wrongs done to her, but somehow all the bumps of life will leave her unchanged. As if she wasn't really there, but outside of herself, watching. Why? Could it be that the real damage was done to her a long time ago? Might what she experiences now be only a repetition, fundamentally benign, because degradation and pain have already trodden their paths in her soul, and a long time ago? Take, for example, this line, from the title story:
'The schemes were for people with plenty of time, or people not totally unfamiliar with being treated like shit. I was intimate with both situations.'
We are not told who had treated the narrator like shit, or when. Many of these stories hint at challenging childhoods. Challenging through poverty. Through the feminine experience. Because of the suffocating atmosphere of small-town life, or because of toxic relations at home. One of the characters 'goes wild' with her mother. Another is allowed by her parents to get together with an adult man when she's 14. One of the women loses her mother when she's a child. Other traumas are obliquely hinted at.
The only relationships that give hope of fulfilment, or at least of being understood, are the ones with fellow sufferers – female friends, or a sister. As for the characters’ occupations, the uniquely worthwhile one is art. In ‘Abortion, a Love Story’ two students of what is probably Trinity College in Dublin, one having a 'liaison' with her married professor, the other one sustaining herself on a sort of prostitution, put on a play about their experiences, and this empowers them just the way that telling one's story is supposed to do. This is what the narrators' feisty humour and irony are for: they are the woman's true revenge. She might not have much agency in the events of her own life, but she is surely in control of all the comments.
This collection can be read in at least three ways: as a commentary on the female condition – in contemporary Ireland, but why not elsewhere too; as a study of a certain type of personality (difficult childhood, problems with self-esteem); or as a depiction of the artistic soul. In every one of these ways the stories offer many ingenious insights, compelling characters, and some seriously good sentences: 'Whenever her new friends asked about growing-up in the countryside, she said, “I had a lot of authentic experiences. Rivers. Trees.”’