John Saul

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Biographical note:  John Saul was born in Liverpool, England. For most of the year he lives 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:  9781844715756
ISBN:  9781844715756
Author:  John Saul
Title:  As Rivers Flow
Series:  Salt Modern Fiction
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FNB
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jul-09
Extent:  128pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  9 mm
Weight:  192 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:  'Oblivious to human exploits,’ it says in the story ‘Aire', ‘rivers continue'. Twelve rivers, twelve stories. These waterways — eight in England, one in Portugal, one in Germany and two in France — are the backdrop to the meetings, partings, confrontations and imaginings in As Rivers Flow.

A new love stutters into life in 1930s Liverpool; an old love dies in Paris. While a sense of menace enters the remote countryside in ‘Butley', a death overshadows a gathering of people in ‘Kennet'. ‘Blyth’ sees an artist threatened by being ousted from his Suffolk home in the first world war. In ‘Elbe’ four diversely connected people focus on a mighty container vessel turning in the river. Beside the Stour a tale of young people's solidarity unfolds.

John Saul's first collection Call It Tender was described by The Times as ‘witty and playful', proof that ‘the short story is not only alive but being reinvigorated in excitingly diverse ways'. ‘Hopefully,’ wrote Time Out of his second collection, The Most Serene Republic: love stories from cities, ‘he'll turn out a few more of the same'. The appearance of As Rivers Flow is further evidence of the rare contribution John Saul's fiction has been making to the short story in the UK.

Table of contents:
Mersey
Elbe
Blyth
Aire
Seine
Deben
Butley
Stour
Parrett
Kennet
Linnet
Tagus

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Excerpt from book:  

Mersey

Let those lights go on. Let: my favourite word from the beginning: let. It speaks authority. Let the party begin. Let the dust settle.

After seventy years it has. Here I am coming down Dale Street into Queensway, looking down the mouth of the old Mersey Tunnel. In 1934 the biggest road tunnel in the world. Who then said: Let the lights be switched on—? It was bearded King George V of England.

At the end of North John Street, notepad in hand, my future dad, tall, blue eyes, straw-coloured teeth, was standing listening. Simmering still from a row with his editor at the Daily Post. My mum with her mum. 200,000 people including entire schools who had trekked into town from all over, Allerton, Huyton, Toxteth, Bootle and Anfield, down Mount Pleasant and Scotland Road, in the heat that followed the cloud¬bursts in the night.

The union jacks waved, the green and gold curtains drew back, jerkily, pulled by strong arms because the gold switch pushed by the King failed to start the motors; the strong arms pulled their strongest because 200,000 people, a crowd rippling with the emotions of expect¬ations, can't give up their day not to see a tunnel mouth. They have to be able to salute the engineering which drilled the two pilot bore-holes to within one inch of each other, which saw the roof defy the very Mersey by just four feet of rock. They must have their aspirations as humans reflected in the perfection of the broad bends of roadway, divinely lit; the sight of the tunnel mouth is their due as citizens, even if some, like my mum's mum, had been content enough to see Queen Mary's dress and hat, or stare at the raindrops on the teakwood and cream enamel of the royal train stopped in Lime Street.

My dad felt his own switch thrown. Glory be, someone in the crowd called when the tunnel mouth appeared in all its lights, green and gold and warm just as my mum's mum could have hoped for. The tiles were exactly the right cream. May, my grand¬mother said to my mother, remember that colour. That cream on the walls is just the colour I want for the living room. What? said May, who had just noticed my dad—not of course with a label stuck to his forehead saying dad, or husband—but getting purple over this shout of Glory be.

Are you all right? May said to him.

What?

That was his first word to my future mother. My mother. His greeting: What?

You look, well, you don't look ill exactly, but you're not enjoying yourself.

Enjoying myself?

He glared. Angry that this could be a possible description of his state. Enjoying yourself is what moon men might do. Rabbits. Girls with dolls’ houses. Fred Astaire.

I've got trouble at work, he said. Now there'll be more.

Come on dear, said May's mother, we shall see better from up the steps. I want to see for myself if his trousers are creased at the sides, as they say, not at the front and the back.

Oh no, said May. Not these steps, my dress won't like it.

It could be your last chance, said my future dad prophetically. That man'll be dead in two years.

We must go down the tunnel soon, mother, said May. Father will take us. He said so. We didn't go to the peek previews and now we will be going in style.

Have you noted down the opening hours, dear? said my grandmother.

Just daylight hours—at first, my father informed them. The next thing we know there'll be operators at the booths at all hours, at Christmas even. But is my paper going to say that?

Paper? said my grandmother.

I work at the Daily Post.

Look, said May, he's giving those children medals.
They'll be commemorative, my grandmother commented. You won't be wanting one?

I'm 24 years old, mother.

Blushing, she looked at my father, who was scribbling hectically on his notepad. My mother watched but didn't want to interrupt. His ab¬sorption with his notebook, his blue eyes fixed there, let her do as she liked. She daydreamed. His hair was fair and neatly parted and wavy, like hair sometimes was in the cartoons. He wrote frantically no matter how jostled he was by the crowd, no matter how much she looked at him and loosed her guesses. What could he dance? Maybe he played tennis, cricket? Or maybe a newshawk had no spare time? He would definitely be too busy writing up events in London and America. About Bonny and Clyde (maybe he knows why the car they died in had a half-eaten sandwich and a saxophone inside?), about the revolution in Mexico. China. Oh what a whirlwind the world was in, what a giddy maelstrom. Look at all these people. Those people on the rooftop there. And there, clinging to the chimneys. What a calamity if they fell. And see that woman in the white suit with that priceless necktie, trying to be Marlene Dietrich

Unpublished endorsement:  John Saul is one of our best short story writers.

Nicholas Royal

Previous review quote:  John Saul is one of our best short story writers.

Nicholas Royal
Time Out

Previous review quote:   of Call It Tender: ‘witty and playful’, proof that ‘the short story is not only alive but being reinvigorated in excitingly diverse ways'.

The Times