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Blind Water Pass: And Other Stories
Anna Metcalfe's stories are about communication and miscommunication - between characters and across cultures. Whether about a blithely entitled English teacher in a poor Beijing school, an immigrant female taxi driver in Paris, or a young Chinese girl spouting made-up Confucian phrases to please tourists, the stories examine the assumptions we make about other people, and about ourselves.
- GenresShort Stories
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 19, 2016
About the author
Anna Metcalfe
6 books66 followersAnna Metcalfe was born in Germany. Her short fiction has been published in The Best of British Short Stories, The Dublin Review, and Lighthouse Journal, among other places, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize and the Sunday Times Short Story Award. She is the author of a story collection, Blind Water Pass, which was published in the UK. She teaches creative writing at the University of Birmingham. Chrysalis is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 3, 2023
The usual caveats about short stories apply. The good ones are sometimes so good that you want more. Contrastingly some have less impact, and the unavoidable effect of inconsistency is exacerbated when the stories are not written as one compilation, at a point in time, but are a selection drawn from different essay and short story prize submissions over a number of years.
Anna Metcalfe has now written her first novel Chrysalis and this is due for publication in July 2023.
Grouping these stories together the two most obvious categorisations are: migration with attendant dangers, and desperation, and family break up; and the cultural contrast between Western Europe and Chinese people when the two come together. The eponymous Blind Water Pass was my favourite of these, and in particular the trick discovered by Lily in order to earn some extra cash, in tips. You just make up (nonsense) sayings in a Confucian style appropriate to the hills, and rocky outcrops where you are guiding your tourists:
“The mind sees only what the eyes are willing to comprehend”
There’s no obvious linkage between the two running themes in the stories and to a certain extent it would have suited me better if all the stories had revolved around one or other of migration/China.
The stand alone stories were more memorable (and I think this has something to do with the way in which such a collection is curated).
Nemeral was a favourite of mine, and I think that’s because its so relatable. Child minding very young children when/if something starts to go wrong is familiar ground, and there’s no disguising adult anxiety since children are attuned to every subtle change in look, and tone of voice.
Does Anna Metcalfe bring a distinctive style, and a uniqueness to her punchy, thought provoking stories? I think she writes well, but I don’t especially discern a style that differentiates her writing from many of the excellent proponents of the form (Wendy Erskine and Chris Power are two contemporaries who come to mind).
Anna Metcalfe has now written her first novel Chrysalis and this is due for publication in July 2023.
Grouping these stories together the two most obvious categorisations are: migration with attendant dangers, and desperation, and family break up; and the cultural contrast between Western Europe and Chinese people when the two come together. The eponymous Blind Water Pass was my favourite of these, and in particular the trick discovered by Lily in order to earn some extra cash, in tips. You just make up (nonsense) sayings in a Confucian style appropriate to the hills, and rocky outcrops where you are guiding your tourists:
“The mind sees only what the eyes are willing to comprehend”
There’s no obvious linkage between the two running themes in the stories and to a certain extent it would have suited me better if all the stories had revolved around one or other of migration/China.
The stand alone stories were more memorable (and I think this has something to do with the way in which such a collection is curated).
Nemeral was a favourite of mine, and I think that’s because its so relatable. Child minding very young children when/if something starts to go wrong is familiar ground, and there’s no disguising adult anxiety since children are attuned to every subtle change in look, and tone of voice.
Does Anna Metcalfe bring a distinctive style, and a uniqueness to her punchy, thought provoking stories? I think she writes well, but I don’t especially discern a style that differentiates her writing from many of the excellent proponents of the form (Wendy Erskine and Chris Power are two contemporaries who come to mind).
November 12, 2016
A thoroughly enjoyable short story collection, and just my genre - literary realism with gorgeous writing and strong characters. I loved the broad range of characters, setting and cultures in the collection, and the originality and gentle brilliance of the writing was magnificent. I read this in about 2 hours and it was brilliant!
June 6, 2016
An amazing, sure to be classic collection of short fiction. If you love Lydia Davis and Kafka, you'll love this book. The immigration themes are hauntingly relevant. My favorite stories were "Numeral" and "Mirrorball."
January 4, 2018
An excellent debut with a couple of great stories: 'Three', set in a Chinese school visited by an obnoxious English teacher, and 'The Professor', enigmatic and beautiful. Some didn't grip as much, but very impressed overall by its breadth of settings and ambition.
June 19, 2016
This was beautiful! By far one of the best short story collections I've read - beautiful, emotive and immersive writing. The whole thing is very... human.
January 10, 2022
It took me awhile to finish this book. It is actually a couple of short stories in one book, and some have a cliffhanger ending. Others are quite sad and gave me a bittersweet feeling. But overall I enjoyed the journey. My favourite would be Nemeral just because of how cute the two little girls are and how brave Sophie is. It is one of a few happy stories from the book and for me it was quiet a breath of fresh air after reading Number Three.
It is enjoyable with short chapters and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a quick read.
It is enjoyable with short chapters and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a quick read.
July 25, 2018
Everything happens in the aftermath of something else.
October 31, 2018
Loved some short stories but others were forgettable. Love the diversity of character and culture
June 14, 2020
These stories are delicate, moving and beautiful. They wash over you with the tenderness of a breeze, subtlety shaping your consciousness into new ways of being.
May 15, 2017
Solid collection. I loved "Number Three", "The Professor", "Mirrorball" and "Still".
July 15, 2016
Some beautiful, unpretentious writing here, and I appreciate Metcalfe's choice to set her stories in a variety of countries. My favourites:
Number Three: The collection's pièce de résistance. Taking place in a girls' school for the impoverished, a teacher from the UK arrives to take up a temporary post to teach English and Miss Coral is given the task of keeping both the new transplant and the school board happy. This is a story of stress and Western entitlement, and Miss Coral stays fresh in my mind.
Mirrorball: A fantastic coming-of-age story. A girl grows up motherless with her unpredictable father and Lucrezia, his club manager and her mother-figure. The story explores these relationships and how Lucrezia's sudden banishment affected the narrator's life.
Nemeral: A deceptively simple story about an afternoon and evening with a nanny and two precocious children who get lost.
The Professor: One of the shortest stories in the collection, and one of the most hard-hitting. Ruth meets a professor living in the same apartment block after the block is evacuated during a fire. The professor asks Ruth to read her a book afterwards and Ruth posts it back to her after the professor is lulled asleep. What happens, or what doesn't happen lingers, and the last paragraph I felt like a punch to my gut.
Blind Water Pass and Everything is Aftermath are also worth mentioning, both conjuring up a very vivid and authentic China.
I wasn't so keen on Still, of which I can't remember anything, and I found Thread and Sand, both set in Middle Eastern counties, to be less detailed and much more distant than the other stories, with characters just being referred to by their pronouns.
Number Three: The collection's pièce de résistance. Taking place in a girls' school for the impoverished, a teacher from the UK arrives to take up a temporary post to teach English and Miss Coral is given the task of keeping both the new transplant and the school board happy. This is a story of stress and Western entitlement, and Miss Coral stays fresh in my mind.
Mirrorball: A fantastic coming-of-age story. A girl grows up motherless with her unpredictable father and Lucrezia, his club manager and her mother-figure. The story explores these relationships and how Lucrezia's sudden banishment affected the narrator's life.
Nemeral: A deceptively simple story about an afternoon and evening with a nanny and two precocious children who get lost.
The Professor: One of the shortest stories in the collection, and one of the most hard-hitting. Ruth meets a professor living in the same apartment block after the block is evacuated during a fire. The professor asks Ruth to read her a book afterwards and Ruth posts it back to her after the professor is lulled asleep. What happens, or what doesn't happen lingers, and the last paragraph I felt like a punch to my gut.
Blind Water Pass and Everything is Aftermath are also worth mentioning, both conjuring up a very vivid and authentic China.
I wasn't so keen on Still, of which I can't remember anything, and I found Thread and Sand, both set in Middle Eastern counties, to be less detailed and much more distant than the other stories, with characters just being referred to by their pronouns.
August 4, 2016
A mix of stories centred on how people communicate, or not, with others.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher John Murray via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher John Murray via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews