{"id":1785,"date":"2012-10-23T18:59:19","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T17:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1410"},"modified":"2016-02-05T19:42:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T18:42:48","slug":"adam-warek-and-guy-ware-reviewed-by-nathan-harrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785","title":{"rendered":"Adam Marek and Guy Ware, reviewed by Nathan Harrison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Normal\"><em><span class=\"Normal__Char\">Sunday, 21st October 2012, International Anthony Burgess Foundation<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Attendance for today\u2019s event is depressingly low (indeed, one member of the audience is a dog \u2013\u00a0are they fans of the short story form?) but this doesn\u2019t stop Manchester\u2019s own Comma Press from making it a successful one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Based in the Northern Quarter, Comma Press specialise in short story anthologies and collections and have just recently been named one of the best independent publishers outside of London by the\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">New Statesman<\/span>.\u00a0And it seems that they have many big name authors in their canon to back this up whose short stories might not otherwise get published \u2013 Frank Cottrell Boyce, M. J. Hyland, A. S. Byatt and Beryl Bainbridge are just a handful of the heavy weight novelists who have entrusted their smaller babies into Comma\u2019s care. However, today\u2019s event is about two of Comma\u2019s best specialist short story writers who are just as integral to Comma\u2019s success \u2013 Guy Ware and the award-winning Adam Marek.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Although the low attendance results in a lack of atmosphere at first, once the authors are up and reading it soon becomes warmly intimate, warding off the steadily growing autumnal bitterness outside. Guy Ware is first to read. His first short story collection,\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">You Have 24 Hours to Love Us<\/span> is due to be published soon and the story he reads from it, \u2018In Plain Sight\u2019, bodes well. It is a darkly comic political dystopia involving goat\u2019s milk, William Shatner\u2019s rendition of\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds<\/span> and exploding, putrefying chickens. It is clear that while Ware\u2019s political ideas are simple enough, his way of exploring them is as different as you are ever likely to see. He does, at one point, threaten to end his story in a very Orwellian fashion, echoing\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">1984<\/span> quite closely. However, he expertly subverts this expectation, throwing a rotting chicken in the face of that notion (quite literally). Ware\u2019s reading of his story is assured, yet he does seem a little nervous. (Perhaps he has seen that the dog, unlike the human portion of the audience, has fallen asleep \u2013 maybe canines prefer poetry?) The nerves, however, are understandable. This is a crucial book launch for him and he pulls it off magnificently.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">Adam Marek takes the stage next. His first collection,\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">Instruction Manual for Swallowing<\/span>,was nominated for the Frank O\u2019Connor Prize and his new book,\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">The Stone Thrower<\/span>, is bound to be just as successful with its greater coherence of theme and structure.\u00a0 He can afford to relax a little more than Ware, and his reading of \u2018An Industrial Evolution\u2019 from his new collection is confident and vivacious. The story is, like Ware\u2019s, a kind of dystopia. This one, however, is more terrifying as it could realistically be a\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">necessary<\/span> dystopia. The story follows a journalist who enters a camp in the near future populated by orangutans trained to harvest palm oil. With him is the human who gave birth to them. This foray into the possible future of cloning and bio-ethics is startling and timely, a mix of the real and the unreal, the oil of fantasy floating on top of the water of reality which Marek agitates and mixes: \u2018I make mayonnaise\u2019 he quips in the Q&amp;A session following his reading.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\">This Q&amp;A session is revealing, shedding light on the creative process and influences of both authors thanks to some insightful questions from Comma Press employee and the event\u2019s host, Jim Hinks and from the audience themselves. Both authors reveal the unique thought processes they go through to bring such fascinatingly odd stories to life. It seems like they both share one idea in common however: the mixing of two distinct ideas to create one madcap but engaging picture. And it seems that if Comma Press keeps these two authors in\u00a0<span class=\"Normal__Char\">their<\/span> mix, there\u2019s no telling how far the much maligned short story could go.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\"><strong>Nathan Harrison <\/strong><em>is a student at The University of Manchester. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Nathan Harrison<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Adam Marek and Guy Ware, reviewed by Nathan Harrison - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Adam Marek and Guy Ware, reviewed by Nathan Harrison - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Nathan Harrison\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-23T17:59:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-02-05T18:42:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785\",\"name\":\"Adam Marek and Guy Ware, reviewed by Nathan Harrison - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-23T17:59:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-02-05T18:42:48+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1785#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Adam Marek and Guy Ware, reviewed by Nathan Harrison\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. 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