This review is by K V K Murthy who no longer lives in Calcutta, our sister city, but has deep ties with it and considers himself a honorary one.
“The city of Nottingham has many claims to fame, although probably its most famous mascot without question is Robin Hood, as any schoolboy will tell you. But it’s come a long way since the middle ages and outlaws: the industrial grime of the English Midlands in time produced a grainy, seamy literature all its own, distinct from the mannered, genteel effusions of urban London and the Home Counties. D H Lawrence looms large in early 20th century Nottingham, a true-blue miner’s son of the soil; post-war, with its grey, bleak disillusionment, Alan Sillitoe made it his own.
That gritty literary tradition evidently survives, and indeed flourishes well into the 21st century. “These Seven” – a collection of short stories by seven Nottingham writers published under an Arts Council grant – makes for impressive, if somewhat sunless reading. Which perhaps is at one with Lawrence and Sillitoe – indeed the last story is by Sillitoe himself, courtesy the kind permission of his widow. Predictably the stories dip into the milieu of the authors, which – judging by the overhanging air of despondency if not unrelieved hopelessness – seems to be a fabric of despair, fraying even as they live and speak. There are common themes in at least five of the stories: broken homes, teen marriages and pregnancies, juvenile delinquency and its cast of supporting characters – social workers, probation officers, policemen. There is one featuring a lesbian relationship; and a lovely tale about the immigrant problem from the point of view of an affected immigrant teenager. Alan Sillitoe’s story which rounds off the collection – again from his working-class mainstay – is a bizarrely frightening tale.
There is even a story with a slightly different background: a new Indian Bengali bride trying to make a home – and failing – with her hopelessly mismatched Bengali husband in the incongruous, alien and unfamiliar landscape of Nottingham. How she copes and survives – with some extramural help, literally – provides the one story in this marvellous collection with elements of fairy tale or fantasy, and a surprising macabre if ambiguous twist.
In these hundred-odd pages, then – a cooking pot, one might say – are tossed together bits and scraps of lives, or leftovers of them. And what emerges, like in all leftover confections, is a taste unique to itself: pungent in places, intriguing the palate elsewhere. The signature of resilience.”
Nottingham's Stories 