Water: review from Dominion Post

What a wonderful surprise it is to pick up a first book of short stories from an author you've never heard of and find them to be extraordinarily good. The stories in this collection from Wellington author Bernard Steeds show sensitivity, wisdom and a deft touch.

There are love stories, ghost stories and even a haunting old-fashioned fairy story complete with a wicked witch.

As the title suggests, they are linked together by the flow of water. In some stories, the water is the main event, in others it is only glimpsed, but throughout there is a strong sense of water as a compelling life-and-death force. Love is another recurring theme. In Small Details, a would-be author is musing about how his lover might correct him when he tries to describe where love is found. 'Yes, love is present in small details, but not in the details you have shown. Love is in a splinter pulled from a wound, it is in a glass of water fetched in the middle of the night...'

To me, these lines portray the essence of several of these stories. They show love not as something grand or earth-shattering, but as a treasure found hidden in the rituals and routines of our daily lives. In Swimming, for example, an elderly couple's daily morning swim together is shown to be as sensuous as making love, and later the husband's bedside tale about the adventures they could have together if his wife would come back to him reveal marital love at its most tender.

Steeds' stories illuminate the moments when people realise the magnitude of what they have gained or what they have lost. This is particularly poignant in River Story, in which a man gets up in the night to hold his new baby after glimpsing a long-ago girlfriend who had an abortion when she became pregnant to him. His regret over not acting to try to stop the termination aches more deeply than ever before, but he finds himself healed by the surprising depth of the love he feels for his son.

Another such moment is captured perfectly in The Sea as Past, in which a woman begins to grieve after her husband drowns. When she weeps, the final sentence simply reads: 'The tea tasted of salt.'

The stories of the fantastic are just as appealing. I was intrigued and captivated by Ice, a macabre tale of a mother and son going on holiday to a turreted hotel run by the very cold, very strange Mrs Stiller. You know that horrors lie in wait, but there's something deliciously awful about turning the pages toward them.

There isn't a dud story here. I look forward to Steeds' next offering.

- Nicola Salmond, Dominion Post.

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