Make-Believe And Artifice by Rose Biggin
I would like to thank NewCon Press for an advance copy of this collection in exchnage for a fair and honest review
Publisher – NewCon Press
Published – Out Now
Price – £13.99 paperback £4.99 ebook
Rose Biggin is a writer and performer based in London and lectures in Creative Writing at Birkbeck (University of London). Rose has long been delighting readers ‘in the know’ with beautifully crafted stories, tales that often play around with myth or classic literary concepts, using them as a springboard for her own unique imagination.
This, her debut collection, demonstrates why she is so highly regarded – as fine a mix of otherworldly fantasy and artful mysteries as any reader could wish for.
Featuring the author’s best stories to date, Make-Believe and Artifice showcases fifteen fictions drawn from the past decade, each of which is a diversion to savour.
I first encountered a Rose Biggin story at a con. I was sitting in on an author reading and I head Biggin tell the story ‘The Gunman Who Came In From The Door’. Its beautifully strange takes Chandler’s quote about what writers should do when stuck and it runs with the ideas of our poor narrator constantly finding gunmen going through her door with not a clue as to what’s going on. The story and the performance really stayed in my memory. Its clever, its funny and it really sticks in the memory and I’ve kept an eye out for Biggin’s work since – most notably Wild Time by Rose Biggin and Keir Cooper a delight of a reading experience with a unique and refreshing take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When I heard there was now a collection how could I resist book temptation and I’m so pleased to report Make-Believe And Artifice was just such a delight.
One thing from the off in this collection is you’ll never quite guess where this ends up. In Chanticleer and The Peacock which absolutely soars with language we meet Chanticleer – described as a ‘dilettante, bon vivant, raconteur’ and so much more plus he has great dress sense and can summon the sun, but you soon twig he is also a cockerel on a farm. We have this tale of the star of the show finally meeting his match in a peacock and the resolution is both out of a fable but also funny and points at fragile male pride too.
Sometimes Biggen uses established characters and returns to them. With ‘The Modjeska Waltz’ we have a take on Irene Adler after the Scandal in Bohemia. Here we watch her get in an uneasy partnership with one Professor Moriarty. Adler’s sharp eye and mind come to the fore but she is also unaware of who Moriarty is so the result is that the two people who can match Sherlock Holmes are actually doing dance lessons! There is more to it than this and the ingenious ending explains a lot but its a stylish and intricate tale that explains why Holes rates Adler so highly. She then returns in ‘The Chandelier Bid’ and does so in Holmes’ London where he asks her for help. I loved the way this story explored Holmes’ weaknesses and Adler’s strengths and the two are not as some shows have them as flirting but here more standing their ground of each other and importantly treating each other as equals. There is both a mystery here and a discussion on how art works so this is not your usual Holmesian tale, and it works very well because of that with a very tense auction scene which ramps up the pace and stakes a lot!
A different approach is taken in ‘A map To Camelot’ which does for Arthurian legend what Diana Wynn-Jones did to epic fantasy albeit done shorter as a series of smart interludes tipping a hat (and a nose) to epic legends, folk tales and Arthurian knight tale. Any fantasy fan is going to chuck at this as well as nod at the role of sidekick, disguise and weird journeys. A great deal of fun!
Did you hear about Dr Samuel Johnson and the ghost? No? Well then ‘The Ghost of Cock Lane’ will answer that problem. It’s a brilliant scene setting of a town all ready to hear a ghost and execute someone on their say-so. But our narrator is a ghost too so exactly what is going on? The style and the wit here make the simple plot really soar as a spectacle you can see that the crowd enjoying it all free entertainment, yet it also manages to have some poignancy too as we realise what actually was going on.
I loved the fin de circle feeling of the ‘the new Woman’ which hides a different kind of tale in what appears to be an elaborate 1899 bohemian Christmas dinner of artists, authors and actors but where art can also be science. Two women have been experimenting with the new art of embalming plus some cutting-edge science and now think they have the perfect act to gain a patron. What will surprise the reader is where the story is actually going and how it crosses the classics but also has at its heart a tale of lost love. It’s a beautiful tale of style, character sensuality, loss and just a mild feeling that horror may not be far off. One of my favourites in the collection.
The surreal with a touch of the macabre awaits in ‘Miss Scarlett’ the first clue is the title and very quickly you may recognise exactly where the cast is from. But there is no Tim Curry this time. Instead Biggen imagines our six characters forever stuck in endless games of murder and wonder what affect that would have on people if you could never escape. Weird, meaning and inventive mean it is another favourite.
As you can tell Biggin experiments with voice and style a lot and then in ‘A Game Proposition’ we appear to be in a port where four women of negotiable affection are having their night off to play a game. The description is full on bawdy tavern tale of the seventeenth century but the game being played is a bit more real than it appears. Our characters are not human, and the stakes are very high so who can control them? A little bit of history meets myth here and a rematch may beckon eventually! A really interesting story
With ‘The Tartest of Flavours’ we e go firmly into the surreal with a touch of murder rhyme and Carrolesque weirdness as Jak heart plots murder in plain sight. We have an elaborate wonderland style party where even the food is alive, and no one believes that Jack the reformed villain could be dastardly. The tale works very well to set up the evil deed and then subverts it while still keeping the tension of a potential death all the way to the end. Highly entertaining on multiple fronts.
So also prepare for trips to pier side theatre, ice cream rogues, the periodic table party and a lot more. The pleasure of this collection is the variety but also that as it’s a Rose Biggin tale that the story will be stylish, smart, a pleasure to read and knows when to make you smile and sometimes punch you in the heart too. This is a pure delight of storytelling and an absolute pleasure to read. Very strongly recommended!
