The Emerald Light in the Air
Donald Antrim
[Granta]
Donald Antrim’s first story collection, The Emerald Light in the Air, is, by turns, absurd, entertaining, and claustrophobically sad. His characters, usually creative types, struggle with art, loneliness, addiction and each other. At the heart of each piece is a story of connection – attempted, imagined, entrapping, or lingering – and the intricate complexity of human intimacy. By keeping his characters outlines, with generic names, Antrim achieves a sense of universality which allows the stories to dovetail neatly. Even the stories’ titles cohere; Pond, with Mud, for example, takes its name from the central symbol of the preceding An Actor Prepares. This notable cohesion across the collection strengthens the impact of each individual story.
While the similarity of the stories can lead to a sense of repetition, this also underscores Antrim’s skill in evoking oppressive atmospheres. At a party, in a florist’s, or in a restaurant, his characters struggle to make sense of their lives, confronting or creating nightmarishly surreal situations in their course. With Antrim’s deliberate, elegant prose, anchored in the quotidian, each story slowly dehisces to reveal a throbbing emotional core. In their muted tones and focus on those moments or decisions which have unexpected and occasionally awful consequences, these stories achieve a plausibility which balances the more surreal moments. A wonderful, moving first collection from a great talent.
