Reviews of Slipping the Moorings: Stories

(Released in early 2009, by Entasis Press, and available from Amazon.com. To order a signed copy, please contact Susan diirectly.)

"A tough and funny talent of the first order... Comparisons don't do Ms. McCallum-Smith justice. Behind the dark atmosphere of a few of her plots, wild laughter lurks, waiting to burst out. Some of her characters are bad people, but we recognize them and understand the difference between those who are really bad and those who, like us, often don't understand what's really going on.

While the landscape ranges over different lands and periods, her stories are about very real people who confront familiar problems and reach for imperfect solutions that never quite work out as the reader expects. The solution reached by the woman who wants to get pregnant but whose husband is in jail is worth the price of the book by itself.

I want to compare these stories to both the Westerns and crime novels of Elmore Leonard, probably our best novelist these days, but fear that will jar prospective readers who shrink from those genres without realizing just how great Mr. Leonard is as a creator of memorable characters and astonishing dialogue. Ms. McCallum-Smith is that good." -- James Srodes, The Washington Times.

"No one could blame you for pausing with a slight air of forgetful uncertainty after devouring three or four stories in this fabulous collection, closing the book to glance again at the name of its author. Margot Livesey? Maeve Binchy? Sorry, no, but you're in the right league, not by reputation but certainly by measure of aesthetic luminosity, narrative acumen, and dazzling descriptive powers unmatched except by the very best writers of this age or any other.
           Susan McCallum-Smith, a brilliant young writer making her debut, soars across the transatlantic pond of contemporary literature like a frigate bird, an old master with fresh wings, and Slipping The Moorings overwhelms with grace, elegance, gravity, humor, intelligence and dare I say perfection.
           Susan McCallum-Smith. Congratulations, dear reader--you just discovered a new and extraordinary talent." -- Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of Easy In The Islands and The Next New World.

"McCallum Smith is a wonderfully stimulating new writer. She has an astounding range, a devilishly clever wit, and an extraordinary ability to illuminate the varieties of human predicaments. Each story in Slipping the Moorings offers a fresh surprise." --Lynne Sharon Schwartz, National Book and Pen Faulkner Awards nominee, and author of Leaving Brooklyn and Disturbances in the Field.

"McCallum-Smith enters the minds and particularly the voices of her diverse characters with much understanding, humor, and sympathy. She renders moments of conflict and change with lively language, and illuminates these moments with an admirable attention to detail and imagery." -- Sheila Kohler, author of Cracks.

"Sean O"Faolain said the short story must supply both punch and poetry, and Susan McCallum-Smith's debut story collection does that and much more.  Ranging from the edgy to the elegiac, these stories feature characters living in contexts of emotional urgency within worlds richly, even munificently, observed." -- Margaret Meyers, author of Swimming in the Congo.

About the cover artist

Louis Sinclair McNally graduated in 1990 from Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, Scotland, and his work has been exhibited throughout the United Kingdom. His landscapes, both urban and rural, are renowned for their clarity of image, their singular, unsettling tone, and their accurate capturing of the Scottish light and palette.

Introduction to the book and extracts

The settings in Slipping the Moorings span from a small croft on a Scottish isle to a hacienda in post-revolutionary Mexico, from New York’s Gilded Age to war-torn London, yet each story reveals characters whose lives are undergoing sudden, irreparable change, and who now find themselves cast adrift. How easily human nature finds ways to sabotage love; and how well it nurses a grievance, scuppers future happiness through revenge.

“Work's not the same as usual, but there’s no point telling Malky that. As a cook in the local primary school, she used to take turns at serving the lunches, but now she stays in the back, not minding about having to do more of the heavy work – heaving great platters of lasagna and mince pie in and out of the big ovens and chiseling it into slices. She can't stand being around the kids anymore. The wee ones, the primary ones and twos scare her the most, the four and five year olds – if one gives her a funny look over his plate of corned beef and chips, she's frightened she'll snatch him and run, and keep running, to the high rise, to the airport, to Florida, the moon. She'll morph into one of they monsters you read about in the paper, who steal other women’s weans, and everyone will think she's a sick perv, when her sickness is only the wanting."(from High Rise)

"'Iona's new place seems comfortable,’'I persisted, trying to gauge his mood from his profile. 'Right next door to David's practice. Roomy now the boys are at University. Handy for the pub. And a nice yard.'
'A yard? Do you no mean a garden? Christ's sake, you even sound like them now.'
'Them? Who's them, Dad? My wife and your grandchildren?'
'Oh, dry your eyes. I’m only pulling your leg.'
'Here,' I handed him the casserole. ‘You’'l need to give this another go. You made a right balls-up of it the first time.'
I folded the dishtowel and placed it on the draining board. My father concentrated on scrubbing out the remnants of whatever crap still lined the dish. During weekly (no, perhaps monthly), telephone calls home, I tried to map out our conversations in advance to avoid words like 'garbage,' 'cookies,' or 'vacation,' those audible tidbits of treason, knowing he lay ready to ambush such evidence of my betrayal.'  (from Slipping the Moorings)