This was a really interesting collection, full of surrealism and magic realism, but at the same time being poignant and relatable and so present in the current moment. Highly recommended.

Speak Gigantular
by Irenosen Okojie
published by Jacaranda Books

My review:
Speak Gigantular is a fascinating collection of surreal, and sexually charged short stories from Irenosen Okojie. Strange and unexpected elements of nightmare and magic merge with everyday urban life and heighten the predominant themes of loneliness, alienation and mental breakdown. Set mainly in London, but with a few further afield these are narratives to dip into and enjoy.
In Animal Parts, the first story in this collection, Henri is born in Denmark with a long, grey tail, but it’s not until he is subject to months of graphic bullying that he realises ‘His mother had lied. He wasn’t special. He was cursed.’ The story builds to a shocking conclusion where his mother is forced to an act of savagery to make him socially acceptable.
Loneliness itself becomes a character in Footer where a woman succumbing to ‘the feeling of being worshipped, to a delicious, deviant unspooling attached to a man’s tongue flicking between her toes’ dates a series of foot fetishists. It’s only at the end that we find out there have been a ‘series of sexually motivated disappearances’ and that the woman is not all she seems.
Snapper details the relentless disintegration of a relationship that has begun after a road crash: ‘I was holding a bag of oxtail on Green Street at Upton Park when the accident happened.’ Cronenberg’s Crash came to mind as I read this story.
In this collection of unusual and imaginative stories Irenosen Okojie has created a language that is vigorous and exciting. Just a few feel as if they’re trying too hard to be quirky and strange and don’t justify their inclusion, but Speak Gigantular is a memorable set of stories that I would recommend to anyone interested in the continuing revitalisation of the British short story.
Biography:
Irenosen Okojie, winner of a Betty Trask Award 2016 for her debut novel Butterfly Fish, is a writer, curator and Arts Project Manager. She has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Southbank Centre, and the Caine Prize. Her writing has been featured in the Guardian and the Observer. She was a selected writer by Theatre Royal Stratford East and Writer in Residence for TEDx East End. In 2014, she was the Prize Advocate for the SI Leeds Literary Prize. She is a mentor for the Pen to Print project supported by publisher Constable & Robinson. She lives in east London.

Publisher:
Jacaranda Books is a relatively new publisher priding itself on ‘Promoting diversity from boardroom to bookshelf’. www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk

Ali Thurm 30.12.16

Library Thing

I was lulled into a false sense of security by the first few pages of Irenosen Okojie’s Speak Gigantular; the prose was beautiful, captivating, at times raw and harrowing, and one of the opening stories, about a boy born with a tail, was intriguing. The ending, however, felt like the story had turned round and punched me in the face (in as positive a way as that metaphor can allow).
The same can be said for much of the rest of the collection. As I continued, I grew used to the feeling of having the carpet pulled out from under my feet, but was still unable to work out when, by whom and why it would happen and never did manage to orientate myself. I was constantly surprised, shocked, startled. It’s not often I find a book that really fulfils my favourite Kafka quote - “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us...A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” - and I’m overjoyed to have discovered this one.
This is a masterful collection of short stories; a myriad of voices and characters and situations rise and fall throughout - a man who robs banks dressed as a chicken, a woman pursued by countless reproductions of a photo of herself, ghosts of suicides wandering the Underground where they met their end, a woman with gills - realism and fantasy are woven together so tightly they lose their distinction altogether as the carefully crafted prose simultaneously casts light on a range of social issues such as race, gender, and disability.
Beguiling, enthralling, completely and utterly fascinating, this collection of stories chewed me up and spat me out over and over again...not that I’m complaining.

Strange stories that often featured vivid visuals. More than tone poems, but not exactly plot-based.

Featuring men in chicken costumes, grown women with imaginary friends, romantic partners picked from a garden, Speak Gigantular is an iccentric read told with real verve. Okojie has a knack for heartfelt stories full of real weirdness.