We had a good number of entries from all over the world, covering a wide range of subjects. There were a substantial number of dead bodies in the form of murders, abductions, and elderly people coming to the end of their lives; analyses of the breakdown of a relationship; enlightening visions of future worlds. The overall standard was very high and many stories were thought-provoking and original. It was noticeable, however, that some potentially good stories were let down by weak endings.
It was also noticable that many entries did not fully meet our rules. Several authors included names or email addresses on the stories themselves. Others were not double spaced and one or two were printed on both sides of the page. We did not disqualify these this time, but would like to remind entrants that we may not be so lenient another year.
Rubery Book Award
It was also noticable that many entries did not fully meet our rules. Several authors included names or email addresses on the stories themselves. Others were not double spaced and one or two were printed on both sides of the page. We did not disqualify these this time, but would like to remind entrants that we may not be so lenient another year.
Rubery Book Award
Judge's Report
The selection I chose for the shortlist are all about tipping points in a manner of speaking; all are about disruptions to the status quo, and characters with problems whose lives are in the balance. In ‘The Tipping Point’, the winning story, Mark’s problem is Alex, a war correspondent who’s been working in the Middle East. He comes to feel that – despite the worthy nature of her job - there is something lacking in her: not only is she demanding and selfish, but she can’t form relationships, and doesn’t seem engaged in the world. When she talks of her job she distorts reality, “glossing over the messy horror to offer amusing anecdotes.” The story forces us to reflect on Alex as a character type, the nature of her vocation, and how these might be linked. Can the self-interested thrill-seeker produce anything other than self-serving narratives? This thought-provoking piece makes an unsettling comment on a particular kind of storyteller and, in turn, on the validity of the tales they produce.
The tipping point comes as the result of a deluge in Cath Humphris’s, ‘After the Rain,’ which won second prize. Gary and Cass haven’t been together long, and the disaster throws their differences into relief. The story takes on an apocalyptic feel as the water continues to rise and the prospect of help appears distant. At first people strive to assist one another, but as the flood fails to subside, altruism is in short supply – opportunists begin charging for boat rides to safety, and there’s talk of looters and riots. How will the balance be restored? The story proposes an answer, perhaps, in its moving final image.
A more literal tipping point is reached by the protagonist in David Chester’s comic story, ‘Embracing Change,’ winner of third prize. Here a woman inadvertently knocks her husband off a harbour wall after reading a lukewarm review of her latest creative endeavour. It’s a story about attitudes to change: those who embrace it, and those who resist. While the husband laments the lost stability of regular employment, his wife seeks stimulation through art and experimental sex. In a way it dramatizes the conflict at the heart of the human condition, where the need for reassuring stability so often competes with a perverse desire to undermine it: such is the lure of tipping points!
I know it’s conventional for judges to praise shortlists, and to speak of the difficulty they have in choosing winners, but anyone who spends time reading these stories will see that mine are not idle words. All were contenders for the top three spots.
Tipping points are in evidence throughout, of course. Sometimes this is a response to illness, as in Mary O'Shea’s heart-breaking, ‘The Winter Visit,’ and Martin Cathcart Froden’s poignant, ‘An Old Boy and a Young Man from Enns.’ The former depicts a character with Alzheimer’s who fears the inevitable degeneration: the final tipping point approaches for this doomed man, and the balance can never be restored. Froden’s story is more optimistic, but no less affecting: here two patients recuperate in hospital and establish a bond. Their “secret language” transcends their generational divide, offering comfort, and the return to a kind of equilibrium for both.
When people reach tipping points, crime is often a consequence, and this collection has its share of transgressive characters. In David Chester’s second contribution, ‘What It Could Be?’ a woman reflects on her life with a safe, dull husband whose demise she appears to have expedited. Likewise, Christian Cook’s ‘This Concerns No One’ tells of man driven to murder in an attempt to re-enter society. Both are haunting, morally complex tales that compel us to ponder life and its value. Crime features too in ‘On Ice,’ Rachael Dunlop’simmaculate story of a woman hoping to leave the country with her lover, and her lover’s mistress’s money. This has a pleasing twist-in-the-tale, the anticipation of which generates and sustains narrative tension wonderfully. Eve Vamvas’s ‘Duchess’ and T. D. Griggs’s ‘At the Border’ both deal with crimes that result from a misuse of power. For Vamvas this takes the form of domestic abuse: when a female doctor cares for a woman who’s been mistreated by her husband, she seems to conform to expectations about those who tolerate abusive relationships. These are undermined as we learn that the doctor herself suffers in a similar way, and this tightly written, troubling story offers a corrective to popular stereotypes. The border guards in Griggs’s brilliant, ‘At the Border,’ meanwhile, conform to stereotype, and don’t realise that they’re being treated with respect by an old couple who refuse to bribe them. This piece makes a cogent comment on what it means to be civilised, while suggesting that one person’s idea of crime isn’t necessarily another’s, and that so-called civilised values don’t always travel that well.
Tipping points are about crises and moments of significant change, and that’s what these stories address. Like the best tales they remind us that we all walk a tightrope: sometimes this is disturbing, sometimes exhilarating. It’s always engaging.