BOOK REVIEW

Reviewed by
SHERIDAN GRISWOLD | Friday April 18, 2008 00:00

Koenings latest work of fiction is a collection of five long stories. Her first novel, Blue Taxi was a thought provoking tale set in East Africa in the fictional city of Vunjamguu, an amalgam for Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar with touches of Kampala (Mmegi April 21, 2007). In Theft she writes about a vague Indian Ocean Coast, 'A City to the South and Usilie, Kudra Island in the last three of these five long stories. The first, Pearls to Swine is set in Belgium and the second, Wondrous Strange in England, but the ties to East Africa are strong.

Koenings grew up in East Africa, Europe and the United States of America (US). She did African Studies at Bryn Mawr College and then a doctorate at Indiana University in anthropology. Her fieldwork was in the islands off the coast of Tanzania. Then came a Masters in Fine Arts in Fiction and she now teaches creative writing at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

The five long stories in Theft are all dated, between 1980 and 1996, but the significance of the dating escapes me. The stories are populated by a mix of people, both ones that could be labelled normal and by others who are deviants in vastly different ways, often not loving enough or loving too much. Yet they are all intriguing and drawn in colours that entice your interest. Often they are about the people we find living around us, when you set up in a village, as an outsider wanting to become an insider, the one who listens to their stories, and then captures and transforms them to share with others (is this another form of theft?).

Though the third story is titled Theft (and don't confuse it with Theft - A Love Story by Peter Carey), there is wheeling and dealing, thievery going on in the other four stories too as theft is a very pervasive part of our lives. Professor Kenings confesses that theft is part of a writer's methodology in the end notes to the book: 'Theft is a big deal to me. People steal from each other all the time - not so much money or possessions, but dignity, safety, love. Fear steals hope from us'. Names of people and places are also fascinating, as they overlap and reappear, are fictitious, but also might belong to a relative, friend our neighbour of ours. Some of the names used here also are found in 'The Blue Taxi'.

In the first story an elderly couple settled on a spread in the country, with space for landscaping, even creating a bestiary, that locals come to observe every Tuesday on a 'topiary tour' (but there is not even one topi or damaliscus lunatus, to be found there). The wife tells the tale. Celestine and Gustave agree that, 'All those foreigners we've met, they've been so generous with us.

It is our turn now to push back into the world the kindness we've received'. They take in two young women. The first, Petra, is sent to them by friends in New York. The nuns at the House of Liege are glad to be rid of Therese, a single mother whose child is gone and has need of a change. This is a story of unfulfilled expectations and longings. Neither Petra nor Therese turn out in the ways anticipated by their hosts. Celestine and Gustave also perceive their two guests differently. Perhaps most serious is their failure to partake in the ritual bowl of coffee each morning. The last straw is when Petra and Therese are seen consorting among the beasts.

Wondrous Strange is the longest of the stories, clocking in at 78 pages. It might have better been called 'A Sea Spirit from Africa' or 'Gathered to Listen to the Dead'. Near Poliston in England, the Thursday Club meets above the Overlook Cafe to tap the frontier humans normally fear to cross. Fontella a.k.a 'Nella' is the Medium and her partner, Max or Maxwell Black, the Scribe. Eva Bright is the most loyal and oldest attender, but has never conversed with the spirits. Susan Darling, only a young art student, provides colour to the small group. Flora Hewett's husband George, recently bedridden, 50 years before in his youth had spent some years on the islands off the East African coast. When a 2,000 year-old Mohammedan djinn ('an intelligent being lower than the angels'), Sheikh Abdul Aziz, speaks through Eva Bright, he says he has a message for Flora Hewett on how to 'cure her ailing husband'. As recorded by the scribe, he insists she must do five things in sequence by a well in a garden culminating in the ritual slaughter of a black and white goat. What is strange about this long story (and convention says a novella starts at 100 pages) is the author's conveyance of the lives and sensibilities of the seven characters - yes, seven as there is also George in his bed and Julian, a young admirer of Susan who helps her when she joins the quest. Nella and Max denounce Eva as a pretender, but the others know she's not a fraud so gather in action with Flora. What they do and how they do it remains for you to read. Do know that the author, in her after words, pronounces that all the names are fictional except for Sheikh Abdul Aziz whom she knows.

'Theft' takes us back to Vunjamguu (though never named). The theft is the luggage of a small group of long-distance night-bus riders on the Jahazi Coastal Seven. The tale alternates between Ezra, the tout or 'bus-boy' and Lucy, a young gap traveler from the northern world. When the luggage hold is found to be empty (they did make a comfort stop in the dark on the way to the city) a few passengers assault Ezra, but he is not responsible. The driver Iffat leapt out of the bus and ran to get a policeman as soon as they arrived. 'But the locals understood. No order, justice, here at all ... in on it ... the driver and the copper'. A wounded Ezra takes Lucy to Abuu's Guest and Rest' and then goes home to the squatter settlement where he lives with his uncle's family, only to find that bulldozers widened the road at dawn and little was left (a scene like at Mogoditshane in Botswana). Lucy will find her blue taxi and survive her losses. For Ezra life is tougher - he is cared for by Habib/Habiba who still has some rooms left, but Ezra has lost his job. Koenings virtuosity reminds me of Mulk Raj Anand and his feeling for people who suffer.

Sisters for Shama is narrated by an old man, Osman, with selling feet, who lives in a small room under Shama's house, while the family lives upstairs. Osman has been exiled from upstairs by Bibi, the matriarch of the family.

Shama, once beautiful has slowly turned into a hunchback. Osman wants to straighten her again, and thinks he can. He believes  'an absent-sibling toothache has bent my Shama's back  ... the missing sister gap becomes an ever-growing hump'. Osman's strategy occupies this tale.

'Setting Up Shop' is the story of Zulfa, a young divorcee, and Masoud Hamad, a young, handsome and successful businessman with three wives and six children. Masoud desires Zulfa as his fourth wife, but she is independent. He sets her up in a shop, but she declares she will only marry him if he is single and fatherless. This is her undoing.

Professor Koenings, when asked about the difference between a story and a novel, replied: 'Stories are far more painful to write ... more constricting than novels are. A novel lets you wander in one world for a long time, lets you discover it in all its corners and peculiarities. Stories require more decisive strokes than that'. Perhaps this is why she has written long stories rather than short stories?  
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