The Bag Lady's Picnic and other stories

by Frankie McMillan

reviewed by Mike Crowl

Frankie McMillan's book is full of mad, bad and sad people, but unlike the characters in most New Zealand short stories, these ones are survivors, and often hilarious with it. I approached this book with some trepidation, since I long ago tired of reading NZ short stories about frazzled lives going slowly downhill. And McMillan's first story almost put me off reading the rest, with its strangely crazy boy, its narrator who doesn't speak (work that out) and its tragic ending. But most of the other stories are full of delights. If the delight isn't in the characters (and it usually is) it's in the language, which is sharp, witty, and full of apt and concise descriptions. McMillan offers us a world of people who are far away from the angst-ridden and adulterous middle-class characters who inhabit most of our stories. Her characters are still familiar, though many of us won't necessarily be well acquainted with them. They're people on the verge of mental illness, or people determined to move beyond poverty, or people who just want to be loved, or people with absurd dreams and ambitions. And they're surprisingly positive. Cliff Hinkley in The Marshmallow Queen is a prime example - whatever happens he bobs up again like an apple in a tub of water. However Cliff, like most of the men in these stories, plays a secondary role. The narrators are almost invariably women, women with dotty mothers and vicious sisters and mostly absent husbands and fathers. That's not to say men aren't visible. They are, but they're seldom tidily connected to the females. (The last story, however, does have a lady fire-eater and a fastidious office worker who manage to tie the knot.) If you're tired of the depressing tone in NZ short stories, then McMillan is the one to cheer you up. Perhaps she's the pioneer of a new generation of short story writers who both enjoy the absurdities of life and can express hope in the midst of them. Back to the Index