Book: Being Dad: Short Stories About Fatherhood
Editor: Dan Coxon
Publisher: Tangent Books
Price: £9.99
Review by Carl Palmer
When 15 contemporary writers share untold experiences of fatherhood through fictional short stories, you know you’re in for something special. And this inspired collection lists some tantalising names in anticipation of a good read.
Being Dad occupies less than 200 pages, but the cumulative effect leaves you with as real a representation of what being a father involves as you could wish for. Brilliantly edited by Dan Coxon, it is deeply gratifying to know that the collection’s very existence owes a great deal to a successful crowdfunding campaign.
From the first page to the last, it sparkles. Toby Litt’s deliberately coarse Paddy & K’Den reaches out on race and identity, illustrating a father’s worry that his son is becoming ‘faux-black’ as he mixes with boys like K’Den whose culture “seemed to be based around preening little toerags, plucked eyebrows and affectedly shaved heads, who told you it was okay to use and abuse bitches and ho’s”.
In Sound Boys, Courttia Newland all but captured me with this superbly crafted description of a dad from the son’s perspective: “And him; the smiling, skanking, slow bouncing, smoke-trailing, sweet-rum smelling, always ready to ramp figure of a man alongside his nocturnal alter ego.”
Nikesh Shukla’s The Dandhiyas galvanised me with his intricate, one-sided conversation with his sleeping daughter. A father lamenting change, he talks about race and culture with blunt directness, perhaps a little too much sometimes.
For the same reasons, I enjoyed Richard V. Hirst’s =VLOOKUP and Richard W. Strachan’s Apple. Both narratives involve dads struggling to cope with the difficulty of fatherhood, combined with additional external pressures. Strachan, in particular, does this cleverly by describing the tangled web and mystique of fatherhood without ever skimping on the tension it creates for him – and us.
Inevitably, loss and death are touched upon. And it’s no accident that In the Marshes (Iain Robinson) and Nothing Else Matters (Nicholas Royle) are consecutive chapters. The atmospheric quality of Robinson’s story, with an eerie setting so unsettling, it creates a brilliant backdrop for marshes you would never for a minute think could be imagined.
You don’t have to be a dad to appreciate this book’s mature reflection on the topic. Go buy it, if only to sit down with a coffee to savour the quality writing on offer.