Susie Wild’s debut collection is a quirky mix in which tales of the fantastic and the everyday are told with inimitable style and flair.
The deranged cravings of a mum-to-be lead to the accidental poisoning of her co-worker in ‘Pica’. Rob holidays in his bathroom and dreams about his underage love interest in ‘Aquatic Life’. The poignant and subtle novella ‘Arrivals’ unfolds slowly, revealing a mother and daughter in opposite corners of the planet, both experiencing their own personal revelation.
Extract
At school Rob hadn’t had any human friends. He’d quite liked the croaky toad in the pond at St Fagin’s Primary, and the biology teacher at sixth form, because she let him eat his lunch in the labs while reading illustrated science books about aquatic life. There he had washed away his loneliness with watery facts: sea lions do not mate for life; young male Steller’s sea lions, known as bachelors, remain isolated until they are large enough to compete with mature adult males for a territory. Unlike Rob’s dad.
Sylvie liked Rob because he let her talk – with her friends she couldn’t get a word in, well, rarely, and her parents would hate to know what she thought about all day long. It was hardly rocket science: boys, rock music, smoking, and escaping from said parents and their crappy town. As soon as she could. On a jet plane.
Sat in his bathtub, Rob was sweating. His heating was turned up to eleven – tropical – while a desk fan perched on the windowsill, pointing its meagre breeze at the quickly cooling bathwater to create gentle waves, but failing to produce his much-desired surf and spray. No relief. His thoughts were turning more feverish with the rising temperatures. He could feel his temper bubbling, a kettle about to boil. A phrase caught like a stuck record in the soundtrack of his torrid mind – I haven’t done anything wrong.
About Susie Wild
Susie Wild is a writer, editor and journalist. She has also been the News Editor for national music magazine Kruger and their website www.krugerlabs.com. She has also worked as Film Editor for Welsh lad mag Red Handed and was the editor of Swansea’s art magazine Platform (2004-2008). She’s written for the majority of the Welsh Press as well as national publications including Mslexia, Clash Magazine,TheSite.org and The Guardian.
Her words have appeared in New Welsh Review, Planet Magazine, Metro, The Big Issue, Buzz, Swn, Artrocker.com, Artrocker.tv, and many other publications. She has 2 MAs because she is greedy for knowledge – one in Journalism from Goldsmith’s College and one in Creative Writing from Swansea University. Susie’s debut short film, featuring her poem ‘Dim Smoking, Girls,’ won The Co-op Award for New Directors at Beyond TV Festival 2007.
The Art of Contraception is published as part of the Bright Young Things series by Parthian Books. All books in the series are from debut authors.
