Delicate Power

Small displacements indeed form the linking premise of Vanessa Furse Jackson's new story collection by the same name: in each tale, some shift of elements or dynamics forces characters to adjust, or at least become aware of adjustment's necessity. But while technically accurate, its quiet title may unfairly reduce this thoughtfulcollection's scope, mystery, and delicate power.

Maybe that title means to entice those readers (me among them) who feel so psychically battered by the graphic, dysfunction- and horror-filled fiction pouring into the world lately, we seek any kind of intelligent respite. And Small Displacements delivers that respite—without sacrificing pain or complexity—by way of each story's sotto voce tone, and by way of an authorial fondness for her addled characters, saturating these tales like a pleasing flavor.

Jackson is a native of England, and most of her characters' voices embody English diction and rhythms—often, impressively, at different class levels. In the terrifically strong opening story, a club of bored, restless, working-class kids in a struggling English town fortify their identities by styling themselves after a species of African dogs, "intensely social, living their whole lives in close contact with their pack mates." They carry out minor neighborhood pranks under cover of night—until a twenty-something stranger shows up in their midst ("like the biggest dog we'd ever seen, and none of us individually had the power to drive him off") and railroads them into committing a serious criminal act. "The Wild Dogs" is so packed with richly realized characters and events as to read, at only 23 pages, like a novella. Narration by JJ, a young Turkish Englishman who reports this account as a childhood memory (as did Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird [1960]) allows a retrofitted sophistication: "I remember, as I ran submissively back and forth, feeling sick with something more than fear."

Jackson writes simply and fluidly, without self-consciousness or show. Yet she often seeds her prose with descriptions so deft and apt, you stop to savor them. A billy goat had "pale rinsed eyes." "I saw a brown and swollen river, careening between its banks like the oiled muscles of a snake."

Jackson has also arranged these stories wisely, so that each subtly counteracts and refreshes the emotional wake of its predecessor. "Miss Best and Mr. Marvel," for example, arrives as a welcome palate cleanser—yet shortly proves it's not to be indulged as treacle. Framed as a dialogue between two residents of an old people's care facility, it veers, at first, close to cuteness: Gallant Elderly Gentleman Reminisces To Gracious Elderly Lady. What saves it is the brute depiction of the facility's rough and patronizing treatment of the couple ("disapproval radiating from [the caregiver] like disinfectant"), and of hints at the possibility—already claiming some peers—of loss of wits. With no physical or mental strength to defend against these encroaching threats, the old couple stubbornly musters the determination to embrace memory—in the form of stories, naturally—to replenish what dignity they yet possess.

Other stories struck me more as brief parables, or what-ifs. "Rain" follows a discontented, well-heeled married woman into a neighboring cemetery on a pouring day, where she encounters a shrewd old man visiting his wife's grave, who wakens her to the idea of valuing "what's closest to us." "The Clinic" accompanies a fourteen year-old girl into the nightmare predicament of having to decide the fate of the accidentally conceived baby inside her. "A Nice Day Out" commences with a jolly character who, earlier in life, spent time in jail. Now on a carefully planned hike in his golden years, nature itself becomes his jailer, and his best-laid schemes gang agley. "Before the Fall" involves another hike, during which a fearful woman questioning her marriage takes counsel from the sassy sister whose own fate defies everyone's imagining. In these and other stories, Jackson ably conveys the beauty of pastoral English landscapes while never romanticizing them...