{"id":1252,"date":"2021-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T03:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2025-05-03T13:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T01:47:07","slug":"ten-acceptable-acts-of-arson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2021\/10\/23\/ten-acceptable-acts-of-arson\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Jack Remiel Cottrell<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Canterbury University Press<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, October 23rd 2021<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Auckland writer and volunteer rugby referee Jack Remiel Cotteral\u2019s clever and meticulously crafted debut, <em>Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson<\/em> 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 \u2018chapter\u2019 opens with a brief summary (<em>\u201cOn Wednesday, I realised I had three new bones in my body&#8230;\u201d<\/em>) followed by 12-15 stories dealing with everything from the existential threat an author\u2019s mortality poses to an unfinished literary character to the illicit flour-trade flourishing under lockdown. These sections are bisected by \u2018lunchtimes\u2019, 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 \u2013 &#8216;If You Can\u2019t Be Useful Be Decorative&#8217;, &#8216;Bertha Rochester Would Like A Word&#8217; \u2013 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 \u2013 and do \u2013 go everywhere. Many of the pieces in this collection are laugh-out-loud funny (Saggitarius\u2019s completely accurate horoscope: <em>&#8220;save time, start screaming now&#8221;<\/em>), 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[350,370,374,500,18,375],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-350","tag-fiction","tag-jack-remiel-cottrell","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}