 By Wendy Wrangham
Paradoxes abound in Clare Wigfall’s debut collection. Unnerving yet empathic stories are executed with a deftness that bestows a tale’s essence morsel by morsel, sublimely whetting the appetite before ending abruptly, often without resolution but with a piquant twist.
Age-old fears (paranoia, independent women, the failure to protect) thread through the varied scenarios whether in a timeless Gaelic isle, an allegorical Hamelin, a besieged Paris or a road trip to Florida, and the macabre is touched on with disappearing babies, hastily buried bodies, incest, starvation and a shocking though unnamed crime that leaves a wife adrift.
Short stories are notoriously difficult to get published, especially as a debut, but the reason why Prague resident Wigfall was given this near-fairytale deal is obvious when you read these varied stories, and marvel at her ability to say so much in so few words. On opening the cleverly-juxtaposed light and dark dust jacket and book cover you are introduced to guilt, loyalty, temptation, exploration, seduction and temperance, and you come to realize - slowly, and only with Wigfall’s permission - what each story is truly about. Or not, as is the case in some…
The Loudest Sound and Nothing is an apt title for such a diverse collection which, to bastardize arguably the best wordsmith of the English language, may well be full of sound and fury but never signifies nothing. This collection deserves to be savored time and again for its detail of revelation.
The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Clare Wigfall
Faber and Faber, RRP £12.99
ISBN 978-0-571-19630-2
Available from Anagram, Big Ben, Globe, and Shakespeare & Sons bookstores (c. 550Kč).
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