Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson

Jack Remiel Cottrell

Canterbury University Press

Otago Daily Times, October 23rd 2021

Although often considered a lesser literary art form, a good short story is, like the Tardis, bigger on the inside. Requiring the rich, figurative palate of poetry and the broad scope of the novel, the ability of a short story writer to encompass lives, lifetimes, and even worlds in a single, fleeting scene is a formidable skill, as is ably demonstrated in this collection.

Auckland writer and volunteer rugby referee Jack Remiel Cotteral’s clever and meticulously crafted debut, Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson is a slender volume comprised of 128 compositions ranging in length from 3 lines to just over a page. Divided into seven sections, one for each day of the week, each ‘chapter’ opens with a brief summary (“On Wednesday, I realised I had three new bones in my body…”) followed by 12-15 stories dealing with everything from the existential threat an author’s mortality poses to an unfinished literary character to the illicit flour-trade flourishing under lockdown. These sections are bisected by ‘lunchtimes’, a series of 2-3 line microfictions that convey as much in 20 words as any 2000-page novel, and the titles of the stories – ‘If You Can’t Be Useful Be Decorative’, ‘Bertha Rochester Would Like A Word’ – are as important as the body of the text. Although there is a certain underlying order to the positioning of the stories (Friday is unlucky, Saturday is sports day, Sunday deals with matters spiritual) they can – and do – go everywhere. Many of the pieces in this collection are laugh-out-loud funny (Saggitarius’s completely accurate horoscope: “save time, start screaming now”), while others are creepy, thought-provoking, moving or just plain weird. I loved every single one of them and was constantly looking for somebody to read them out to, such was my delight at their artistry.