Country: Scotland
Genre: Crime/Drama
Pages: 168 kb (eOriginal)
Buy It Here
I make a vegetable broth with the innards. Now I know people would think I'm a little old fashioned but it's just more protein that usually gets wasted. Young women today don't like to think that meat was once an animal at all...
It wasn't long before at TrestleGate survivor was back to his feet. McDroll strikes me as someone who understood what to do with the proverbial hot potato that is the one dollar eBook. Don't be cheap, but don't give the readers too much. Give them a sample of what you can do. KICK IT TOGETHER, formerly two five stories volumes named KICK IT and KICK IT AGAIN, is still very short at ten stories, but it's straight to the point at showing what McDroll is all about. It's as long as a novella maybe (I'd say sixty to eighty pages) of kick-ass and oh-so-scottish short stories. The best part in this is that it's only one freakin' buck.
The best story of the collection (and one of the best shorts I've read this year) is titled DROWNING, where a support for learning teacher named Kirsty is having extreme difficulty to face her daily obligations. Work has become a black hole of pain and dread for her and there's no end in sight. It's a very accurate story that portrays the throes of depression without the usual obvious signs: pills, alcohol, explicit self-destructive behavior, doctors, concerned relatives. Not only it's accurate because McDroll is able to write it in Kirsty's behavior, but also because depressed people tend to isolate themselves and keep everything within. It's borderline noir* and it's written with a very acute sensibility. Don't be surprised to see this story around for the Dead End Follies Awards at the end of this year. Here's an extract:
*It's a little too emotional to be noir, but really who cares? It's just a really good story.
** I love it when she uses the word "wee"
The best story of the collection (and one of the best shorts I've read this year) is titled DROWNING, where a support for learning teacher named Kirsty is having extreme difficulty to face her daily obligations. Work has become a black hole of pain and dread for her and there's no end in sight. It's a very accurate story that portrays the throes of depression without the usual obvious signs: pills, alcohol, explicit self-destructive behavior, doctors, concerned relatives. Not only it's accurate because McDroll is able to write it in Kirsty's behavior, but also because depressed people tend to isolate themselves and keep everything within. It's borderline noir* and it's written with a very acute sensibility. Don't be surprised to see this story around for the Dead End Follies Awards at the end of this year. Here's an extract:
Being the "Support for Learning" teacher was meant to be a key post within the school but Kirsty knew that her "colleagues" saw her as a failure, not able to hack having her own class, not able to deal with behavior issues, not able to get her finger out and come in prepared every day. In other words lazy. So she had been shunted out of the classroom and now sat with the "numpty" kids who still couldn't read and write, the kids who were still struggling to order to 20 even though they had been at school for six years.
There are also the Gemma Dixon stories, who have a pivotal place in this collection. Gemma is McDroll's recurring character. A woman in the harsh and very masculine word of police. I like her a lot, because she's very feminine but not overly sassy and over-the-top. She acts like one of the boys, but her feminine sensibility is leaking sometimes, like sun through the planks of a barn. Those moments are delicious. It's those human moments that put all the fun in reading McDroll, those moments where truth comes out even if the protagonists are struggling to keep a facade. Not many writers do this well and McDroll does it with great attention to detail.
I was a little lost throughout some of the stories. Not that they were confusing or anything, but McDroll herself admits that she loves to write about Scotland a lot and it shows. Some of the stories are you know, have a very Scottish feel to it. While I don't mind her use of vernacular*, some stories showed such a strong sense of place that I thought there were thinks that I didn't get. Anyway, it didn't detract from the fact that those ten stories for only one buck are highway robbery. Not every story is straight-up crime, but most of them are. McDroll is at her best when she handles those damaged protagonists of hers, who were only just a little more human than the people they live around. Chalk her up as another interesting author from Scotland.
THREE STARS
THREE STARS
*It's a little too emotional to be noir, but really who cares? It's just a really good story.
** I love it when she uses the word "wee"