Aliens

My first ever reading of a Granta and I must say I have enjoyed this one. Found in one of my local free neighbourhood libraries, and I will return it and hope that someone else enjoys it.

The theme is Aliens. I was not too sure what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised at the depth and ideas presented in both fact and fiction that the editors of Granta offered. People being aliens to their surroundings, be that in lands foreign and in their own personal situations.

A few of the standouts for me.

A fiction called Come, Japanese by Julie Otsuka. Unbeknownst to me, this was a chapter from a book by the author. The small bio at the rear of this issue informed me this was an extract from the Julie's The Buddha in the Attic. Told from the perspective of just about all the young Japanese girls aboard a migrant ship heading to the US at the turn of last century to meet their future husbands they had never met, I found myself enthralled with the blend of hope and fear.

German expat Philip Oltermann wrote of being taken to London as a boy when his Anglophile father was transferred there for work reasons. He told the story of the meaning of B.O.G Standard that had a lot of humour along with the issues his family had in understanding their new English lifestyle. The letter his father wrote to a schoolmate's tradesman father was very witty, the reaction proof of lack of understanding between cultures.

I found myself enthralled, for a reason I cannot explain, in Mercies by Ann Patchett. Maybe a subject I had never thought of? Ann was taught by a Sisters of Mercy nun as a youngster, Sister Nena, who had stuck with Ann during her time as semi-literate schoolgirl and from there had become an author of note. Ann stayed friends with Sister Nena. When Nena's convent was closed she had to restart her life in a world utterly alien to her. From Ann's observations, she tried hard to exist with the help of her faith and her natural stoicism and good humour.

Here is what You Do is a fiction by Chris Dennis that told the story of an intelligent high school history teacher who became addicted to painkillers and was jailed for drug offences while coming back across the Mexican US border. Main character Ricky ends up in a cell with Donald a long termer in for manslaughter. Ricky does what he can to survive by being Donald sex partner for his four month stay. A brutal story that both repulsed and enthralled.


My first and so far only Granta, but I would recommend this one to anyone that wants a mix of fact and fiction short stories that are easy to read and blend something for everyone.

More non-fiction than I expected, but I also thought that the title “Aliens” meant space aliens, not strangers in a strange land aliens. Many of the non-fiction pieces were interesting reads, but none were particularly outstanding. Mostly long-form, magazine-style, personal essays, with the occasional narrative thrown in to make things a little more literary. One of the stories in the collection, Nami Mun's “The Anniversary,” was phenomenal. It was like a Raymond Carver story–harsh and heartbreaking.