Paddy O’Reilly, Peripheral Vision, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-07022-5360-7, $19.95, Paperback, pp.198, first published in 2015.
Also by Paddy O’ Reilly:
Novels: The Wonders, The Fine Colour of Rust (as P.A. O’Reilly), The Factory
Short Stories: The End of the World
Novella: Deep Water (in Love and Desire, edited by Cate Kennedy)
Non- Fiction: It happened in a Holden (editor)
O’Reilly presents another short story collection to her other award winning short stories, her novella, and the three novels shortlisted for major awards. Peripheral Vision is a fine example of the genre; inspiring a continued, or possibly even a renewed interest in the genre of short story fiction.
Her short stories are told to a contemporary readership in a traditional narrating style, mainly from the first-person point of view, and use both the male and female perspective - according to the subject of the story to bring a convincing point of view across to her readers. She writes about the discrepancies we experience within our multicultural society, and what it means to the individual when confronted with the ordinary and not so ordinary situation.
O’Reilly sets up the reader’s expectations within the first paragraph - even with the first sentence; encouraging the reader to seek relief of the kindled curiosity. But this is not always satisfied at the end of the story to provide the quenching cathartic experience. Instead, the ending often leaves more questions to be asked than answered - when the story finishes with an unexpected conclusion. It leaves us thinking about these issues, and makes us want to find out more - when it seems that the story has only just begun.
O’Reilly has her view firmly focused on her peripheral vision. Her stories are set mainly in urban and rural Australia, which she presents with the familiar scenes of overcrowded trams and hot and dusty backyards. The stories are at times not only confronting, but also thought provoking. O’Reilly captures the sights of our current Australian society which are so easily forgotten, are not often talked about, or mentioned after school or work. Like the vagrant who announces loudly to be Jesus while he encroaches on teenage Anna on the tram. ‘”Why didn’t they leave them all locked up?” her father says whenever he sees a mad person in the street. “Do you call this social justice?”’ (The Word). Or, the weirdly sexually charged experiences of the male character during the hidden and forbidden dogfight (Recreation). With her palette of literary devices, O’Reilly paints a picture of ‘The Other’. She makes us painfully aware of the things we so desperately try to avoid confronting ourselves with. Experiments with monkeys is not everyone’s favorited dinner subject, even if it provides the potential for the ability to move a mechanical limb (Restraints). O’Reilly’s characters compete in the story with their situation to stir our ethics and to question our values. In her stories friendship competes with family ties (One Good Thing), animal cruelty against high income (Recreation), teenage idiosyncrasies against the strength of parental love (Procession), and the shallowness of one mind with its incessant muttering can cover up and mute the undisclosed pain of another (Déjà Vu). Her stories highlight the issues on the peripheries of our society, and deal with the themes of disability, race, culture, poverty and exploitation, and oppose fame to humiliation (Serenity Prayer), and war to love (A Short History of Peace).
O’Reilly does not shy away from controversial issues of rape and its connotation to friendship and family ties (One Good Thing). When primary school kids grow up in the shadow of a psychopathic brother, who gets a kick out of throwing darts at his friend, and knifes at his sister, to force her by sheer terror to watch him rape her best friend in front of her without any interference, while leaving the mother in utter ignorance of the traumatic event, we wonder if blood really should be thicker than water, and if it really causes selective amnesia to prevent poignant memories from surfacing twenty years later. Paddy O’Reilly constantly questions what makes us tick, what memories motivates us into action like the long-buried memories of family sexual abuse which prompts six girls with a baseball bat to bait the bad guy, and to prevent the rape of their friend. ‘When his hands touched Emma’s thigh, the sludge inside me churned up a dim memory of my childhood bedroom and the suffocating weight of the bedclothes, then the sensation lifted and the clean air of the park flowed over me’ (Territory).
It can be liberating to write about society in a small number of words like O’Reilly does. A sharp vision for the things seen from the corner of the eye are dragged forward into the light, and exposed to the questions of what we are going to do about it.
Marion Reuter is a Student of Creative Writing at Griffith University, this is her first review for assessment.