Diving Girls

Misunderstandings and miscommunications, and the danger of superficial masks – the diving girls of the story have all the appearance of mutual sisterly affection. The children of a modern marriage, they are two stepsisters. Their status in the family is perfectly poised, and all is blissful until the younger sister is injured by glass after swimming on the beach, and the stepmother’s biological priorities are made evident. This theme of penetrating surface exteriors in relationships among both family members and society’s outsiders is constant throughout this collection, where initial appearances belie a contradictory reality. The insignificance of images and slogans is constantly revealed. The intricacies of relationships within families are laid bare in a number of the stories, and especially the tensions between parents and children. One story, 'Peaches', plays out a teenage daughter’s reaction to her mother’s debunking of a romantic family myth. This also develops another of the collection’s themes, namely sympathy with the outsider, in this case a young German soldier who was lynched when caught with his French lover at the close of the Second World War.The excommunicated, and people whose tragedies have branded them, appear in a number of these stories. 'Over The Rainbow' gives dignity to a drug dealer’s girlfriend in the face of bus passengers’ malevolence. 'On the Edge' deals with the impossibility of redemption for a mother who struggles against guilt following the death of her child in a fire. The anti-hero of 'Running Away with the Hairdresser' is caught by the responsibility of committing an unexpected act of humanity when he saves his young lover’s son from drowning in a flooded mineshaft. Like a number of the men, and some of the women, in this collection, he is self-absorbed and at one remove from mature human relationships.