The Not-Dead and the Saved review – Kate Clanchy’s wide-ranging short stories

Family ties, especially motherhood, take centre stage in many of the 16 stories in Kate Clanchy’s first collection. Irene is something of a prose companion to Newborn (Clanchy’s poetry collection about parenthood), skilfully juxtaposing the disorientation – “Post-partum, that’s what they call it. In parts. Parted from yourself” – with the protagonist’s flourishing sense of maternal solidarity with other women. There are also some curveballs thrown in for good measure, like the clever Brunty Country, which imagines the Brontës as a contemporary slush-pile discovery of a literary agent: “Maybe, just maybe, WH isn’t really the eternal masterpiece we’re all making out? Maybe it’s just a small press novel that got really, really, lucky? You know, warm wind from Twilight, warmer one from Charlotte, the public in a hot mood for incest and cheap ebooks.” Moving swiftly between the comic and the tragic, Clanchy has an eager eye for each and every detail in between.