Republics of the Mind: New and Selected Stories

If there is a leitmotif in this collection, it is most explicit in a story quixotically entitled `Republic of the Mind' (note the singular `Republic'). As circumstances permit, each of us can experience `a state of contentment and completeness' (a `republic of the mind'):"It was more than some utopian fantasy about society. It filled the gap between actuality and possibilities of all kinds. Somebody once said that the art of life lay in recognising the luminous moment. Robert wasn't certain about what that meant, what the moment might be, but he had some ideas. The novelist Neil Gunn had this concept - the atom of delight - a stew of contentment and completeness - `I came across upon myself sitting there'. The republic was something like that, except that it was constant, and for everybody. It was a state of being in which all the people understood themselves, and what they were doing, and why they were where they were".Robertson offers us a variety of `republics' and epiphanies. In the story above, Robert's vision of self-government is so real to him that he can mentally absent himself and be `away' in `the Scottish republic of the mind'. Robert's epiphany came two years previously with a kiss `loaded with possibilities'. He and Kate are `still unwrapping the possibilities it contained.' In `Tilt', the `delight' to which Neil Gunn refers, is when the hitherto solitary Allan `plays out' a memory card game `in a oner' on a Saturday night in the companionship of his one friend's father and sister who breathlessly look on. There are `possibilities' here too of further `matching' besides the suits of cards. In `The Shelf', it's the self-satisfaction Ken feels after making up a flat-pack wardrobe (ignoring the instructions `in Korean and bad English'!) and his newly discovered belief that 'anything was possible' in his relationship with Louise. For Billy, the `moment' is when he makes up his mind to accept a lift to Inverness, despite leaving in the lurch a fellow hitch-hiker (`The Jonah' of the story's title) and Billy's new belief that `from Inverness he could go anywhere'.These are not the easiest stories for readers to enjoy. Many are `slices of lives' that are uncomfortable. The first story sets the tone. The death of the gangrened giraffe is almost unbearably moving and is genuinely shocking. `Old Mortality' offers a different `take' from Sir Water Scott's novel of the same title. Robertson's mason defaces the headstones, leaving `the names and dates of people obliterated'. `MacTaggart's Shed' is a powerful portrayal of ethnic cleansing in a future Scotland. Several stories are set in care homes. The collection's final story is a real frightener. A visitor comes to an almost empty care home set for closure. Not being able to find his way out of the lounge, he finds to his horror that he is one of many crying `Help!' `Help!' `Help!'In some stories, our comfort level is not helped by the writer's liberal use of swear words. Women are central to the stories but are infrequently the central characters. Typically the men don't `understand themselves, and what they were doing, and why they were where they were'. The stories themselves are uneven in substance. After too many, one asks the question, `So what?' However, the effort that the reader has to put in is worth it. The best stories illuminate the human condition. `Willie Masson's Miracle' paints a chilling portrait of Willie, a sentient stroke victim whose dignity has been lost together with his power to communicate but who, with a supreme mental effort, shows his repugnance to the decision that he will be removed from his home to `a Home'. Willie is amazed to see his hand `flip up' and `catch the wifie a neat wee skelp with the knuckles on the end of her nose'. Here and throughout, the Scottishisms add rather than detract. `The Claw' powerfully describes the lies and the deceits that visitors to care homes practice and the guilt that this all too typically occasions. In `What Love Is', both Dan and Joan know what they want out of life and their relationship (`something more than what it is'). Their tragedy is they have never been able to connect affectively and share their needs. Robertson's images are vivid and memorable: the big fat white maggots in the untouched meat room that were `like polystyrene chips that exploded when you stepped on them'; the unborn giraffe (`eighteen perfect inches from head to tail'); the city lights that `gleamed like amber fish in the black water'; and the neck of the empty Frascati bottle that sticks out of the hole in a `dead' television screen, thrown there by Kate when her hopes for the last election don't materialise.

James Robertson is a very good Scottish writer. He writes varied and always interesting stories with a lot of truths in there. Great stuff again

great