André Mangeot

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Biographical note:  André Mangeot lives and works in Cambridge. He has published two well-received poetry collections: Natural Causes (Shoestring, 2003) and Mixer (Egg Box, 2005). He was a prizewinner in the 2006 Peterloo and Wigtown/Scottish National poetry competitions and is a member of the performance group, The Joy of Six. A Little Javanese (Salt, 2008) is his first book of short stories. He is currently working on a novel.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714605
ISBN:  9781844714605
Author:  André Mangeot
Title:  A Little Javanese
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  Short stories
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jun-08
Extent:  144pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  15 mm
Weight:  216 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 19.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  This is a collection of stories about the altering landscape of the mind and the landscape of place. The stories are set in diverse locations, France, North Africa, London, Russia, New York, Thailand, Indonesia and the island of Java. In each setting – the sweltering heat of the desert, the steaming humidity of the Javanese jungle, the chocking fumes of an Indonesian city, the chill of Moscow in winter – lives unfold in stories of emotional intensity and sometimes shocking outcome.

The characters in these stories are in complex situations that draw the reader in and explore the nature of what it means to be human; our capacity for good, evil, strength and weakness. The emotional landscape sweeps from an Indonesian street child’s dreams of the stars and buying his uncle a taxi to a young American driven by anger towards her absent father into an act that has dreadful consequences in the North African desert. We travel from the lofty ambition of a Russian teenager to be a champion ski-jumper to the dark depths of a man preying on young Thai street girls.

Mangeot’s writing is never cloying; it shifts effortlessly between the haunting rhythms of the near poetic to fast sharp-edged dialogue. His capacity to conjure a strong sense of place is at times redolent of Maughan and Hemingway. If you like writing that is authentic, unexpected and imbued with the scent of distant places and people living out their stories there then this collection will not disappoint you.

Table of contents:
Madison and Penn
Hope
Ambition
One Day of Life
A Little Javanese
Acknowledgements

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Excerpt from book:  

Madison and Penn

Harris stood watching the far end of the compartment, the connecting door, and through it the next carriage. Every surface, each window and screw, juddered and shook, striving to break loose. His gaze played back along the walls, the ceiling. The graffiti was everywhere: formless coils applied with a spray-gun. The longer he looked, the more it resembled an alien script. Or like watching language disintegrate.

He wondered how it would be, down here, were the coupling to fail. The darkness, the heat, the diminishing air. Twenty-six people, he’d counted. Most, he assumed, strangers to each other. Would even panic or fear induce them to speak, acknowledge their neighbour? No, he thought, they’d keep it to themselves. Expire quietly as the oxygen thinned, what passed for their dignity intact. In fact, it occurred to him, survival rarely depended on oneself. From moment by moment one existed, or ceased to, because of chances like this, the randomness which threw people together. The selfless, the courageous, the doctors … one never knew. They might be here, they might be one carriage along.

Swaying, adjusting his hold on the rail, Harris glanced at his watch. 4:02. Dully he recalled altering the dial on the plane. By how much, though? Time was effectively meaningless until he remembered. He yawned, rubbed his eyes.

The South Ferry — Bronx. A main line. The cars had to be full. At least till the Switchblade Angels and Love Vigilantes — names carved in the overhead panel — slipped after midnight from the sidewalks above. Right now he’d almost have welcomed them. After only two stops he was tiring of these faces, their masks of identical vacancy. And fatigue had deadened his professional eye: acute enough, usually, to determine income, occupation. Thank God, he thought, the lecture was already prepared, secure in the case at his side.

They hurtled on through the tunnel, one more bubble of wind. With listless carnality he perused the female passengers. A gum-chewing punk tuned in to her iPod briefly held his attention; then his thoughts turned guiltily to home. He’d promised, dammit, to call Ruth when he landed. How could he forget? He cursed again, half aloud. No one could hear, of course. Had he yelled in this din he doubted one head would have stirred.

He tried to calculate where precisely they were, under which street. At his elbow was a vandalised diagram of the route: several stations erased, torn away. From the tip of Manhattan he traced the line as best he could along Varick … Sheridan Square … yes, somewhere here, between Madison and Penn. He wanted out at the next stop, regardless. Any sidewalk, however ice-bound, seemed suddenly preferable. He longed to look up and see open sky. Wherever he emerged he could always take a cab. Deciding this, he felt better.

Unpublished endorsement :  One of the protagonists in A Little Javanese is Jorge, a UN official in Honduras who aspires to be a "big writer." He wants to be a writer who "never lost sight of the detail but went somehow beyond it." In this collection, Mangeot achieves what his character aspires to: building up dazzling, perfectly realised worlds that reach beyond their circumstances. He intertwines the personal and the political with terrific skill, as in Ambition, a story set in Moscow in the Eighties, where a young ski jumper falls in love amid the onset of Gorbachev's perestroika. This is a fantastic collection: ambitious, moving and beautifully written.

Joe Dunthorne

Unpublished endorsement :  With a meticulous sense of place, André Mangeot presents a series of characters caught between worlds, on the cusp of change, between life and death. His stories are gripping and atmospheric, full of impending doom and unexpected redemptions.

Sarah Bower