Barbara Else
Quentin Wilson Publishing
Otago Daily Times, January 11th 2025
Better known for her adult novels and children’s stories, The Pets We Have Killed showcases Barbara Else’s talents with the short story. The pieces in this collection range from Mansfield-like slices of life such as “The Huntington Road Girls”, in which an expedition to a local reservoir leads to an unexpected and terrifying encounter with the boys of Portugal Road, to Carter-esque fairy tales like “Needlework” and “Vengeance”. There is even a piece of science fiction: who knew that requiring wannabe political representatives to undergo public abuse and two years of seclusion – complete with sleep deprivation, fasting and bloodletting – would severely limit the pool of available candidates?
Despite varying widely in genre, tone and setting, the mix of new and previously published work forms a richly layered and thematically cohesive whole. Many stories explore male-female relationships and power dynamics, with women facing a variety of sadly familiar challenges, which they address in various ways, from the direct to the cryptic. As the protagonist of “Thrall” puts it: “He thinks he owns her – let him think so. Crypsis, which can be protective camouflage as well as aggressive masquerade, is much more prevalent in the human species than in any other and used in less predictable ways.”
Else is also a keen observer ofthe human condition, and two of the most memorable stories explore how our understanding of the world changes as we move from child- to adulthood. In “Collateral Damage”, a schoolgirl finds herself used as unwitting ammunition in a spiteful battle between staff members when her teacher instructs her to recite a revised version of Binyon’s “For the Fallen” to his rival’s class. It is an act of cruel mockery whose significance we, as readers, recognise, although she does not. Yet, despite her lack of understanding, she senses the wrongness of the situation and is left with a sense of culpability for failing to speak out: “She should have said it didn’t feel right. She should have said”. And in “Imaginary Friends” a son’s adoption of an imaginary twin sister reminds his mother of a boy from her own childhood whom she once thought equally fictitious but now realises was all too sadly real.
For those of you looking for lighter summer reading, please don’t let the above descriptions put you off. The book abounds with humour, satire, and thoughtful reflections on love, romance and family. Even the darker stories are leavened by Else’s beautiful and evocative writing. “Imaginary Friends”, for example, was as notable for a description of gate-swinging that transported me back to childhood (“hop on the back, give a gentle push off with a foot, slowly sway the quarter circle until it bumps to a soft stop at the post with the lock”) as for its powerful epiphany.
Despite its slim dimensions, The Pets We Have Killed is a rich and deep: A collection to dip into and savour.