Fairfield: The LAST Sad Stories of G. Brandon Signet Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett<\/em> is Robert Edson Sandiford\u2019s third collection of short fiction. There are thirteen titles that the author identifies as stories; in fact, there are fourteen in as much as the \u201cPrologue\u201d is also fiction. Some of the stories are linked, and characters from Sandiford\u2019s novel And Sometimes They Fly and his first short story collection: Winter, Spring, Summer Fall, also show up here. Present too is his earlier foray into magic realism. According to the prologue, the stories have been authored by G. Brandson Sisnett, and the name Fairfield recurs \u201cas city, state of mind, person, or idea of characters and places.\u201d (2) In essence, Sandiford, if one trusts the prologue (one shouldn\u2019t), assumes a double persona, that of author and acquisitions editor of the stories. The truth, however, is that the prologue suggests ways of reading and linking the stories. In \u201cThe Big O\u201d and \u201cFunk,\u201d two stories that feature Orville Sobers, and \u201cMichel,\u201d we again meet the character-narrator Edson Cumberbatch whom we first encountered in Winter, Spring, Summer , Fall. Although the interaction among siblings, which is the focus in Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, continues in \u201cMichel,\u201d it is, however, the enigmatic nature of marital relationships that is Sandiford\u2019s primary focus. The Fairfield stories depict gradations of marital relationships. There are those that last: Bradford and Maddie\u2019s ( \u201cThey Build Houses Here Now\u201d), the Linton\u2019s (\u201cMadame Tussaud\u2019s Garden\u201d), and the Cumberbatch\u2019s, Edson\u2019s parents (\u201cFunk: ). Edson tells the reader that in the earliest years his parents quarreled over every little thing, and then suddenly they stopped. \u201cIt occurred to me [that] my parents may simply have been together long enough at the time to voice their regret at some of their choices\u201d (143). This statement is pivotal inasmuch as it implies that being able to resign oneself to or accommodate intra-marital conflict might be part of the reason some marriages last while others fail.<\/p>\n There are those relationships characterized by sexual infidelity: Orville and Yvette\u2019s, in \u201cFunk,\u201d and Justin and Helene\u2019s, in \u201cNorthern Lights.\u201d In both cases the women are unfaithful, and they seem genuinely puzzled by their need to cheat. There are hints here and there that neither Orville nor Justin understood the women they married. Indeed Orville\u2019s subconscious seemed to tell him that his marriage was wrong; he became almost catatonic when he was called upon to state the marriage vows. But can anyone truly understand another person? Do we even understand ourselves? The reader is more trusting of Orville\u2019s story largely because the narrator knows Orville. The men are the devastated ones in these failed marriages. These are themes that only a middle-aged writer can confidently explore. Both stories are further enriched by their blues tone and settings.<\/p>\n The story \u201cMichel\u201d merits special attention. It\u2019s an excellent depiction of bullying, if not of downright sociopathy. Sandiford shows not only the bully in action but the desperate measures the victim engages in to palliate the effects of bullying. It is also Sandiford\u2019s return to the theme of sibling rivalry; this time, however, with a perspective enlarged by the knowledge and wisdom gained from experience. Early in the story the reader wonders whether Bert, Edson\u2019s older brother, isn\u2019t a repressed version of Roy, the bully-sociopath, but later learns that he has become a respectable professional.<\/p>\n Sandiford\u2019s penchant for speculative fiction, as shown in And Sometimes They Fly and The Tree of Youth, is present in three of the Fairfield stories. \u201cThe Jumbie Tribe\u201d features the ghost of a Lebanese merchant standing on a street corner in Bridgetown, Barbados recalling his life and uncovering an ugly reality that only he, because of his jumbie omniscience, can know. \u201cScreensaver,\u201d like Gabriel Garcia Marquez\u2019s \u201cAn Old Man with Enormous Wings,\u201d employs an unlikely situation to proffer oblique social commentary. This story too makes the reader think of Kafka\u2019s \u201cMetamorphosis.\u201d Its tone is gentler than Kafka\u2019s and is consonant with one of the major preoccupations of the collection: the invaluable benefits of family real and adopted. The third story \u201cMassiah\u201d projects a Barbados of the future. It offers brilliant insights into the machinations of power and the lies of which history is rife. Two of the stories are about artists. \u201cThe Hours In-Between,\u201d where the detective Julius McDuff from And Sometimes They Fly reappears, focuses on finding a motive for the suicide of Jeffrey James, literary novelist, turned writer of \u201cpolice procedurals.\u201d McDuff, who is also Jeffrey\u2019s friend and informal student, is at Jeffrey\u2019s home, the suicide scene. Along with the police he is trying to come up with a motive for the suicide. The story soon turns to reflections on another suicide: Mittelholzer\u2019s self-immolation. No motive is found, not even McDuff, who believes he can communicate with the dead, finds one. But Sandiford provides clues. There\u2019s the comfortable house which Jeffrey sacrificed his vocation to acquire and maintain. Some truths hold across millennia: gain at the expense of one\u2019s soul is of little worth.<\/p>\n The other story, \u201cDance a Little,\u201d contrasts with the first. Gary Spellman, upon hearing about the death of Michael Jackson and his father\u2019s admiration for the military genius of Lt Lance, decides to leave everything behind and live for his art. He is fifty. The story comes with a note of caution, however. Lt Lance, for all his military genius\u2014his ability to get his lost men safely out of the desert\u2014died a drunk in an almshouse. Michael Jackson\u2019s death was almost as inglorious. But Jackson and Lance had \u201cguts\u201d and exemplified it, and Spellman thinks the time has come for him to prove to himself that he does too. Fiction Review<\/strong><\/p>\n Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett is Robert Edson Sandiford\u2019s third collection of short fiction. There are thirteen titles that the author identifies as stories; in fact, there are fourteen inasmuch as the \u201cPrologue\u201d is also fiction. Some of the stories are linked, and characters from Sandiford\u2019s novel And Sometimes They Fly and his first short story collection: Winter, Spring, Summer Fall, also show up here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2120,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions\/2120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em>by Robert Sandiford
\nDC Books, 2016
\n144pp, $18.95<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nThere are two stories where the reader\u2019s attention focuses on language. \u201cThick \u2018n\u2019 Thin\u201d is written completely in Barbadian, a first for Sandiford. The other story, \u201cMobbed by the BBC,\u201d draws our attention to what\u2019s left out when we translate or even paraphrase another\u2019s language.
\nThis collection offers some lovable characters dealing with grim aspects of existence, beautiful prose, and many moments for reflection on life\u2019s enigmas and complexity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"