Novel set in CORNWALL
The Book of COVENTRY (A City In Short Fiction)
18th April 2025
The Book of COVENTRY (A City In Short Fiction). Editor: Raef Boylan.
This is part of series, with new city titles regularly added to the collection. The publisher brings together short stories written by authors who are native to the city in question, and then beautifully arranges translations by a selection of skilled translators. At the end of each book there is a short bio of each author and a little about the individuals who bring the stories to life in the English language. The series is published by Comma Press, a not-for-profit publisher and development agency specialising in short fiction from the UK and beyond.
There are already several titles dotted around England, including Newcastle and Liverpool, and further afield there are titles set in Prague, Cairo, Beijing and particularly poignant at the moment, given the current situation, in Gaza.
“Cov” (Coventry) is a “character you can grow immensely fond of, even though it demands some time and effort to discover its best qualities“, states the editor, it is often described as a place “you want to escape from if you want to achieve success“. The city is marked by WW2 and prior to the German bombardment, it was deemed to be the best preserved medieval city in Britain (who knew?). Along came the bombers and Goebbels created a new verb in German: coventrieren, which means to destroy completely (also a word that firmly remains in the Nazi period and hasn’t found its way into common parlance in Germany, I hasten to add).
But those who love the city really do and these stories underlines the (oftentimes, wry) affection the writers have for it. In Sightseeing, Nick Walker chooses a curmudgeonly character who is driving a sight-seeing bus around the city. He has only one tourist on board but his spontaneously creative route adds spice to an otherwise regular journey. We also discover that the ring road was “once awarded the accolade of Best Ring Road in Europe” though of course he ponders the nature of the competition.
The accidental sounding of a nuclear alert forms the basis for one story and in Graffiti, Nuzo Onoh explores the life of Godiva, a young woman who has always yearned for a more simple name. She spots prescient graffiti that foretells elements of her life, addressed directly at her. This is an inventive and beguiling story that made me smile.
There is no getting away from the bleakness of the city, it is after all the essence of the city. In Carriages at Three, Tanya Pengelly opens with her character pondering her arrival in this city, with its zero hour contracts and brutalist architecture… people begging for coins, the boarded up windows and everywhere the graffiti saying “smile” (that word feels rather threatening, she muses).
It is a city where the charm is not always evident but the stories have a robust sense of purpose, and clearly those who know the city well render what they see with a ‘warts and all’ fondness.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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