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Choices edited by Christopher C. Teague
01/06/2007 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub: Pendragon Press. 207 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 7.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-9554452-0-5. Buy Choices in the USA - or Buy Choices in the UK  check out website: www.pendragonpress.co.uk
We all have to make choices. They may be fairly trivial ones such as whether to have one or two slices of toast for breakfast or whether to wear the blue or the green shirt. Other choices are life changing.
The acclaimed film, 'Sliding Doors' used a such a device inter-cutting between the two possible outcomes of just catching or just missing a particular train. Some apparently trivial choices can become significant. One friend decided not to get on the bus outside Euston Station because it was crowded, choosing to walk to her meeting so was not on the bus when the suicide bomber blew himself up. On any other occasion this would have a trivial choice. It probably saved her life. We can all recall instances like this.
All six stories in this anthology concern choices. They may initially seem casual but the consequences are devastation for the people concerned.
'The Last Kiss' by Andrew Humphrey is a complex if rather disjointed story. John, the narrator, is married to Becky who is in the throws of depression. Walking back from a party with his friend, Charlie, they pass a man about to throw himself from a railway bridge.
Charlie makes the choice to walk on but John goes back to try and talk him, Luke, out of it. He succeeds but Luke suddenly starts turning up in his life and appears to be getting too close to Becky. Luke also seems to know the secrets he has kept from Becky and does not appear to be a straightforward stalker. The situation begins to become sinister.
'Certain Faces' by Stephen Volk, like 'The Last Kiss' is also a first person narrative but from a female perspective. Stella's marriage is also going through a rough patch. She is an artist who is always on the look out for new models, especially interesting faces. Always she meets them first in a neutral place before deciding if she wants to paint them. Stella meets three students she decides she can't use, then one goes missing. She chooses not to tell anyone that she had been in contact with the missing girl. The decision has profound psychological effects.
'Kid' by Paul Finch is the most memorable story in this volume. Again, it is told from the first person viewpoint. The narrator is on his way to 'sort-out' his ex-wife's boyfriend and to reach her flat, he has instructions to get off the tube at Baker's Wood Station. Already we know that he is not a very nice person and has chosen to take this action and to get off at that particular station. What he finds is totally unexpected and becomes a prisoner in a walled enclave in a London suburb. There is no way out. He tries to escape but is brought back. It is the kind of place that we would love to exist for the incarceration of the irredeemable anti-social person. It is a brilliant, scary story.
'Hitch' by Gary Fry is the only non-first person narrative in the volume. Louise's choices initially seem very commonplace. She has a job interview and if she gets the job will be free to do what she wants and have money of her own. Her boyfriend and her mother both wanted her to stay on at school. Louise has other ideas. Then she misses the bus and is offered a lift by a stranger. The choices that she makes during the day will shape her future.
Eric Brown is a very good writer of short stories. Often they have a Science Fiction bias. 'Memory Of Joy' does not disappoint. The choices made by the characters involve the ways that they cope with grief. After a dreadful accident in which the narrator, Ed, reverses his car over his daughter, killing her, he chooses to cope with the grief by remembering. His is the guilt trip. His wife, Laura, chooses a different way of forgetting. A new treatment is able to wipe out painful memories. The treatment, though, proves addictive. If a big pain can be removed, why not a little one? But where is the boundary between the pain we need to be experience to be human and being free from debilitating problems?
'Radio Trauma' by Richard Wright is unusual in that it was originally written as a play and has been performed on stage in Scotland. John Brosnan is the host of a late night radio phone-in chat show. This night he starts off a discussion about the horror writer Christie Shelby who has just been found dead in her flat. The first couple of callers are about what he expects but the third is very different. Keith says he will kill his wife if John does not answer his questions truthfully, on air. This is a very powerful story, told simply. The tension builds slowly as, at every stage, John has to make choices which for Keith's wife are literally a matter of life or death.
The stories here all seem to have a theme of deceit running through them and it is that that frequently influences the choices. They may be lies of commission, such as in 'Kid' where the narrator's ex-wife has deliberately given him wrong information or omission as in 'The Last Kiss' where John has not told his wife about his relationship with Helen. In some, the protagonist is lying to themselves as Lucy does in 'Hitch' trying to believe that her estranged father is a decent guy. Overall, this is an anthology of well-written novelettes but with three that stand out. 'Kid', 'Memory Of Joy' and 'Radio Trauma' are certainly worth buying this volume for.
Pauline Morgan
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