Thomas Morris has a knack of writing about ordinary things in an unsettling way and unsettling things in an ordinary way. He described his debut collection of ten stories set in Caerphilly, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing, as ‘realism with a kink’. Open Up, a slimmer second offering of five stories, amps up the Kafka. One is narrated by a seahorse, another by a vampire. Morris’s attitude towards his characters remains central: while displaying their darkest secrets, you sense he’s on their side. Here, the narrators are all male. From a young boy to a thirtysomething, they negotiate masculinity’s contradictory demands, accused of being distant, passive and unambitious.
Individually, the stories offer texture in tone and place; collectively, they revolve around connection and the wish to belong. In ‘Wales’, a boy delights in a football match with his father, unaware of what’s around the corner. The 5ft 3in office worker in ‘Little Wizard’, named Big Mike, is as nonplussed about gender politics as he is heartbroken about his height. A passive holidaygoer experiences meltdown in Croatia with his girlfriend in ‘Passenger’. Loss and parenthood are explored in ‘Aberkariad’. And an Adrian Mole-like ‘psi-vamp’ who sucks energy obtains fangs for his 21st in ‘Birthday Teeth’.
Short fiction can perform magic tricks with space and time, and Morris has mastered this. Casting his net of influences wide, he also finds ways to add dimension that preclude the written word. On Spotify and YouTube, a playlist of 15 songs, from Beck to Philip Glass, which Morris listened to while writing ‘Aberkariad’ has been uploaded, taking the same title as the story. He cites the American writer A.M. Homes as an influence, and her coolly detached tones emerge in ‘Passenger’, one of the collection’s highlights.
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