Forbidden Cities

Paula Morris

Penguin

Otago Daily Times, January 17th 2009

After making her name with novels such as Queen of Beauty and Hibiscus Coast, Paula Morris’s new story collection Forbidden Cities establishes her as one of those rare writers who can tackle both long and short fiction successfully. Written for publications from Landfall to the Listener, the stories have a diversity of voice, style and setting, but are also able to speak collectively. The clue to what unites them is contained within the title itself. 

Other reviewers have commented on Morris’s ability to capture the essence of place, but for me, the ‘forbidden cities’ are not so much the reflections of urbanity but the relationships within them.  Characters are either involved in illicit or destructive interactions, or are standing on the outside looking in.  The stories also exhibit the author’s ability to move between genres.  In the most haunting, ‘Many Mansions’, an estranged ex-wife attends the funeral of her former mother in-law, and an entire novel is layered into the space of a few short pages.  By comparison, ‘Testing’, about a failing unit of production-line exam markers, is a deft satire on the use(lessness) of standardised testing.

Like any collection, some stories are stronger than others, but weakest of them are as good as you’d find anywhere, and the best are stunning.