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Caravan Thieves

Caravan Thieves is a collection of 19 short stories. There isn’t a specific connecting theme but they are generally realist and concern sexual and family relationships. Certain stories tread closely the boundary between realism and a more fabulist or surreal tone. In the opening story, Rape, for instance, a couple wake to find that the caravan in which they’ve been holidaying has been moved in the night to the middle of a vast field of rape. How or why this happened is never explained and though it is feasible that it could have been done conventionally, some readers suppose that something supernatural or other worldly has taken place. In another story the guests at an outdoor cocktail party are troubled by the presence of a talking hat. Again, unreliable narration means that the reader is uncertain if this talking hat is an illusion, or whether we are in a fabulist realm. Other stories are more firmly in the realist tradition. Apples, Oranges is an autobiographical piece recalling a brief childhood friendship and its abrupt ending. Firemen is a macabre story about a man who self-immolates in his ex-wife’s front garden, and about the ex-wife’s subsequent relationship with the fireman who dealt with the event. This story pushes at certain generic boundaries, being at once a story of a failed relationship, and a story that explores certain social taboos regarding the body and bodily processes. It attempts to be challenging in its use of urination as a symbol of reconciliation, assertion of identity, and token of love. Other stories attempt similarly bold metaphorical alignments – in Pangea Ultima a vision of plate tectonics is used to give shape to a story about a miscarriage.