John Saul

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Biographical note:  John Saul was born in Liverpool, England. For most of the year he lives and works in Germany, where he translates for an international environmental organisation. He has also lived in France, Canada and Ecuador, where he began writing fiction. His short stories have appeared extensively in the UK and elsewhere, most notably in Australia and Canada. He is the author of two novels, Heron and Quin and Finistère.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844713226
ISBN-10:  1844713229
ISBN-13:  9781844713226
Author:  John Saul
Title:  Call it Tender
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FNB
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jun-07
Extent:  120pp
Height:  203 mm
Width:  127 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  180 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 8.99
Price:  USD 14.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Call it Tender is a collection of contemporary love stories commenting, often wryly, on the tangles and absurdities of modern life. To read them is to be blown by the North Sea wind, feel your way around a makeshift Nazi prison cell, see the night-time Eiffel tower sparkling. Chrissie motorcycles across the Mallorcan plain to reach her yearning sister; that marauding mosquito patrols a luxury Paris flat; and a puzzled Mr Squires checks about the possible submarine. Relationships unfold not only in London, Paris and Berlin, but in rural Wiltshire and on the Suffolk coast, in Mannheim and New Jersey.

The backdrop is music from the sixties to the present; the art, films and culture. Among those appearing are Jim Morrison, Manet, Sherlock Holmes, the Incredible String Band, Mao Zedong and Lucinda Williams.

John Saul's innovative stories have been written in the conviction that the short story form must evolve if it is to survive. His fiction has appeared frequently in anthologies, from the prestigious New Writing series to the books of Serpents Tail. His stories have been called funny, thoughtfelt, beguiling and provocative.

Table of contents:
G3,5
Alice Balancing
Sisters
Freewheeling
How Technology Can Burn Down Your Home
History
Tender
Shingle Street
Untitled
Taiga

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Excerpt from book:  

Taiga

Down the concrete tunnel in the hospital catacomb Ms Born surged beside me. Scarf surging, surging handbag over surging shoulder. Ship’s figurehead, Greta Garbo, Queen Christina. Queen Born surging, scarf (autumn colours) tied sweetly but smartly, one gold square facing forwards. It was an effort to keep up. It’s my first real walk in a week Ms Born. Good, she said looking ahead. Good? I queried. Good to have something to work on—so she said looking on ahead, expecting great deeds; but deeds well in the distance, not in the tunnel with me.

The moments of desire, Ms Born, that appeared in that time and will open out over years, that you will never know.

At the end of the tunnel men in blue overalls hosed down a concrete floor. Aura of kitchens, giant grey saucepans, ribbed sides of cow. Arctic temperature, puddles on concrete. Are such the sites of true romance?

With Ms Born bearing down the overalled men pointed the nozzles aside at some drains. Ahead and brightly lit, a ramp opened to the outer world, to bright blankets of teeming snowflakes. Ms Born would clearly go straight on, up the ramp. To her bus, her car, her shopping, her man?

She turned full-frontally.

To get to the library you go down those stairs.

That dirty green staircase?

Down there. Goodbye.

Goodbye.

I love you, Ms Born.

Ms Born, wait, what were you thinking as we were walking along? I have a savings account. I know people. I can get together ten thousand pounds. Tell me what you were thinking and I will give you ten thousand pounds.

You can’t leave the hospital.

By taxi I can. We can get this taxi here. Go to my place, I’ll get some street clothes, we’ll go straight from there to the bank.

OK. Let’s go.

You believe me?

You seem honest. Or should I close my eyes until I see the money?

That’s not a bad idea. Stay in the taxi while I get my clothes.

That was quick.

I’m quick. These clothes will do. There’s the bank already. How do you want the money?

Ah, fifty-pound notes will be quite all right.

They’re counting them by hand.

So I see. Thank you.

So what were you thinking, as we were walking?

I was thinking, there’s no way I’m going to get involved with him.

That’s heartening, almost. You were thinking about me.

I think that about everyone on the ward.

Not everyone. Not Malcolm—

I don’t discuss other patients. And when I say I think that, I don’t need to think about it, I know so. But we’re getting outside our brief. Unless you have another ten thousand, but you don’t.

So what else were you thinking?

Otherwise I was thinking about broccoli. How much to buy, whether to buy a lot or a little, enough for one meal or two.

Wh—

Now I have ten thousand pounds, I have decided to buy a lot. I may even get a pound of leeks. Goodbye again. I will make my own way home. If you want the library, try reception once you get back. Or you could start again at the lifts.

Then down those stairs?

Down there. Goodbye.

Swaggering back from his consultation, Malcolm stepped up to the panorama window looking over the west of the city. I followed, holding onto a table, a bed, the window-catch.

The sun shone on white roofs and open spaces.

Malcolm of the thick wavy grey hair, big fruity face, poked my arm, wheezed indecipherable words. Beautiful! he scrawled on his pad. He put his thumbs up. Snow!

He held up successive handfuls of fingers. Seventeenth floor. Big, he wheezed with his arms wide, meaning the window.

It was big. We woke to the sun in the bottom left, looked for it later overhead; slept as it set bottom right.

The sight excited him to a wheezing fit. His wife said he had smoked for fifty-seven years. Fifty cigarettes times fifty-seven times three hundred and sixty five. He could have bought a small house.

Malcolm, owner of no house, walked off to check in the mirror. In place of a house he had a new Persil-white bow-tie arrangement, a blue microphone with a millefleur design on his throat. It was pretty, circus pretty.

Smart, he said stepping back from the mirror. Smarter than the old plastic. Bakelite, they used to call that. Here GOES, he said as he switched his new device on.

That hospital shirt looks terrible, said Ms Born. Surely you’re not going to keep wearing that.

Won’t believe this, Malcolm had put on his pad.

When I was young, it said. I turned to the next sheet.

I was German. I was Gross, not Cross.

Not all.

He switched on his device.

I MARRied a Tunisian. I was crazy about her. Ich war in sie schockverliebt. That’s the same but it’s German.

You’re trying to be funny.

No, no. Those were the days. Wife doesn’t know.

Which wife?

Stupid, he said poking my arm. Wife now of course. I have photographs. Photographs, he wheezed triumphantly.

Ms Born appeared.

You’re to go to Dr Allen, she said looking towards me.

It’s good, said Malcolm clicking on the switch by his chest.

You’re to use it sparingly at first, said Ms Born.

You don’t want me. Want me talking so much.

Switch it off now.

The diagnosis is no longer Menière’s disease? Should I say disease or condition?

I was trying to impress Ms Born with my questions at the consultation. Ich war in sie schockverliebt.

It’s your fifth day, said tall Dr Allen. Had it been Menière’s you would have recovered your balance by now. Don’t worry, he said putting a hand on my shoulder, you will recover. Our work is of the highest standard. Ms Born stood aside. She had dimples when she smiled. Her lips were large, her eyes large. Beautiful lips. My gaze never reached her hair. Her arms were by her side. When Ms Born looked straight at me I felt no distance between us.

Previous review quote:  … There are excellent things here too… John Saul, whose story memorably combines an Anglican vicar with Robert Johnson, the great Blues singer.

William Palmer
New Writing 5 (Stand)

Previous review quote:  Haunting and intriguing.

Nicholas Royle
Time Out

Previous review quote:  Beguiling.

The Guardian