Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer's Reviews > Polluted Sex

Shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize.

This debut short story collection (which the author has described as “unmarketable”) was published by the ever-excellent Influx Press – publishers of among others Eley Williams brilliant “Atrib.” winner of both the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for which I was a judge) and James Tait Black Memorial Prize (the first short story collection to win one of Britain’s very oldest literary prizes) and Percival Everett’s wonderful Booker shortlisted “The Trees”.

There are 27 parts to the collection – spread over around 220 pages. The title story “Polluted Sex” was published by 3AM here (https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/pollu...) and I think gives a good sense of the author’s more conventional writing while being perhaps more rounded than some of the other stories and certainly at nearly 30 pages 2-3 times the length of the next longest story.

These other longer stories (“Blue” “Purple with Mottled Black”, “Hot Rocks”, “Before Him”, “These Young Things”, “Let Ashore”, “How I”, “Let Ashore”) are relatively conventional in form but distinctive in style/protagonist/subject matter - drawing on the same ground as the title story. Typically, they feature young female often bisexual narrators, and explicit about their bodies (with for example menstruation and sex featuring repeatedly), often written in lively Irish vernacular. Another common theme is possessive boyfriends – which fits with a wider theme of possessiveness over female bodies and which is best captured in “First Person Possessive” which (in the words of the blurb) two ungendered characters contest the same female body. I found some of these stories among the weakest, unless like the title story they also drew on a wider strand – in that case one of the two female protagonists’ reaction to the Omagh bombing and the insensitive if not provocative probing of her English boyfriend into that reaction in front of her friends and family.

“Mammy Mary Says” was a favourite for me – and feels like the late childhood/early teenage years of some of the protagonists of the other conventional stories while I saw “Squiggly A Crack” (about a new Mum) as a follow up for some of the protagonists (a kind of Before and After to the collected main stories); while “Molly & Jack at the Seaside” seems like a “Peter and Jane” rewrite of one of those stories.

Some of the other stories are very short – in one case “Formalism” a single word, in two others (“Diktat/Dictate I and II”) a phonemic word and an image.

Others rely on typographical innovation “Winona the Wicked Wanton Woman” is a fable (around man’s mistreatment of the natural world and suspicion of female sexuality – both aided by organised religion) illustrated with doodles; “ABCB AABCCB // Untitled Children’s Song” a Frere Jacques/London Bridge is falling down mash up about the Magdalene Laundries (subject of course of another Booker shortlisted book this year – “Small Things Like These”); “Axis” is a graphical representation of the first line of the short prose poem “Pivot”.

Some rely on literary references – “Hills Like Hemingway” transposes Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” to an Ireland to UK Ferry while maintaining the implicit abortion discussion of the original and while also mixing in Yeats poetry.

Others draw on Irish Catholicism liturgy – including (interestingly) the opening “Penitential Acts” which proceeds from the confession – and the closing “Churching” which movingly deals with a late miscarriage.

And some – for example the futuristic (I think) “Perfect Flick”, the performance-art “Interlude Belles-Lettres” or the very short “Pinna”, “Phonology”, “Joni Mitchell Nudes” were rather lost on me.

This interview is particularly helpful on the author’s background (her and what she was trying to achieve (https://www.writing.ie/interviews/on-...) – some excerpts (my editing) ……..

I purposefully wrote Polluted Sex on bodies, particularly female and queer bodies; because we write with our bodies – unusual animals. I try to depict intimacies of the body in portraying bodies, bodily exposure, nakedness and bodily function ….. @While writing Polluted Sex when people have asked me what I’m writing about I’ve said: “riding”. They usually laugh and say: “writing …?” I responded: “No, riding. It’s called Polluted Sex.” ………….
Over the years, due to disability—I have Systemic Lupus Erythematosus—I am no longer able to type for any length of time without joint and nerve pain and agonising hand cramping and stiffness. …………..
Being forced by my body to stop handwriting, then typing. To stop writing altogether. I took this disagreement with my body badly. I was furious. Furious. Furious. Furious. I may be hampered. I may write forever in obscurity. I have long since made my peace with that. One thing, I will not be, though, is beaten. I will not be beaten. If I was to be forced to write in speech via dictation and voice recording then transcription; all work had to lend itself to performance, to voice. My stories were now essentially hybrid texts. ………………
My work does not exist to be just like someone else’s. My work does not exist to be representational of heteronormative ableist black and white binaries in thinking. Low resolution. Analogue. Prosaic …
I consider text a vehicle for the body

Overall an intriguing, slightly uneven but never less than raw, corporeal, immediate and humourous, debut short story collection.