TEA FOR THE RENT BOY

Helen Lynch (Wild Harbour, £8.99)

When not teaching Medieval Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen, or playing in an all-female ceilidh band called Danse McCabre, Helen Lynch writes short stories. Her first book, a collection of tales set in Poland, appeared in 2009, but Tea for the Rent Boy shows the breadth of her range for the first time.

An adaptable writer, Lynch is fluent in a multitude of voices. All but two of these stories are written in the first person, and each narrator has a distinct way of expressing herself (or occasionally himself) and looking at the world. She adopts the persona of a Polish woman who has come to work in Scotland; an old war veteran from the North of England who can’t imagine not working, even though he’s in his nineties; a young girl listening to her Ukrainian grandmothers’ accounts of their homeland.

If the dialects and linguistic quirks sometimes seem a little forced it scarcely registers, and one of the book’s real triumphs comes when Lynch makes her biggest leap and writes from the perspective of a French priest trying to convert a North American tribe to Christianity. In his considered opinion, a crucial milestone on the road to civilisation will have been passed when the tribespeople learn to beat their children. When he finally persuades them to truss up and lash a misbehaving young girl, it’s a victory for Christianity, civilisation and above all himself.

While some themes are examined from several angles (emigration, being the “other woman” in an affair), it’s a pleasingly varied collection which takes many unexpected turns. A woman who has just given birth is riled by the attitudes of the hospital’s night staff, and a 1980s housewife falls into depression, bringing her husband’s frustration and resentment to the boil. The title story revolves around a couple whose relationship has run its course but who can’t bring themselves to make a clean break. A chilling story about a teenager being abused by her grandfather is made even more disturbing by the girl’s resigned composure.

There is one constant undercurrent running through these stories, which is that its characters take for granted that living and working abroad is the birthright of ordinary folk. That old northern bloke mentioned above was a car worker in Chicago before the War, learnt some Russian from sailors in Murmansk and has a daughter who used to live in Germany. A Scottish boss chats to his Polish employee about the Polish airmen stationed in the North-East when he was a boy. The husband in the title story is a Norwegian photographer living in Britain and the couple in “Splash!” are sailing to Britain after a long spell in Brazil. Free movement in these stories is a positive thing, a catalyst for change, an opportunity to learn how others live and reach across boundaries. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that this fine book should be arriving at a time when borders are being reinforced and drawbridges raised.

ALASTAIR MABBOTT