Into a weird, wondrous world

Short Stories: In early 2002, British publisher 4th Estate, the same astute firm that introduced E. Annie Proulx, as she initially was before dropping the 'E', to a grateful European public, published an extraordinary collection, Assorted Fire Events by a new US writer David Means.

Rarely has the blackest of black been as tenderly presented as it is through the 13 tales, many of them quite short, that make up that astonishing volume.

At the time, Means created the impression of being the literary equivalent of the second coming. To read his work is to experience the different and the strange. Assorted Fire Events reads well the first time, and improves with each successive visit.

Now Means strikes again with The Secret Goldfish, a book so good the best advice is to run out and buy a copy now. There are instances when it is necessary to repeat earlier praise. On the publication of Assorted Fire Events, it seemed fitting to add Means to a lofty US literary roll of honour extending from Eudora Welty, to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, and on to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff and Annie Proulx.

Means has more than justified this inclusion. He is menacingly funny, profound, relentless, unnervingly original and capable of seeing life, particularly its tiny, unforgiving details with a clarity that borders on the surreal. The unsaid is written, eloquently and graphically, in narratives that achieve the impact of chilling visions.

Each of the 15 stories in his new book opens out into its own little world, a vivid universe of horror and detached remorse with sufficient pangs of recognition to ensure the reader remains warily alert.

Much of the magic is caused by pitching the narratives within the realm of the possible. A young girl defies her lover and insists on driving through a storm to see her father. Initially when the lover hears, "a small car had blown from the bridge" on a news report, he did not make the connection. But all too soon, he does.

Nature is more than a backdrop. Just as the mighty Hudson River dictated happenings in Assorted Fire Events, that same body of water also exerts its presence here.

For all the psychological content of his dark narratives, Means is very conscious not only of the physical context, but also of the ways in which a certain light, a certain blast of lightening, the freak collapse of a bridge spanning an underground river shapes a moment.

The stories are full of such moments, invariably leaving the reader caught between laughing hard and feeling that bit queasy and uncertain in the face of tragedy - what more could a fiction writer possibly desire?

The opening story, Lightning Man, follows the eponymous anti-hero, Nick Kelley, through a series of further encounters with lightning. The first time he was struck he had been fishing, an activity Means describes as "a sacrament". Means, the literary equivalent of film-maker David Lynch, expands on this statement: ". . . and therefore, after the strike, when his head was clear, there was the blurry aftertaste of ritual . . . Each fish seemed to arrive as a miracle out of the silence . . " Having been struck by lightning, the experience makes him view fishing differently: "He identified purely - at least for a few months - with the fish." Having survived several such experiences, Nick becomes the sort of guy Ralph, the local barber, considers an asset to the barber shop; a genuine novelty - "Christ, it's a good story you got, Nick."

It's all very good, but what elevates the narrative towards the heights that Means so often reaches in his black art, is that he makes it clear Ralph only half believes "this guy who seemed so weather-worn and odd."

What seems only a passing observation develops into a bigger statement about that enigmatic "great desolate span of the central states", the neglected middle region of the US.

"Men like this arrived often out of the Great Plains, even now, years after the wanderings of hobos and tramps, and they often spoke in a reverent voice of preposterous and prophetic events . . . Ralph knew the importance of such souls. They walked the line between truth and fiction."

It Counts As Seeing provides several versions of an incident, and here Means makes brilliant use of the imprecise ways in which exact details are interpreted.

Most of these stories shimmer with his weird flair. Petrouchka [With Omissions] charts the life of a pianist after the day he loses his gift.

The offbeat moves hand-in-hand with the sinister. Interestingly, this collection opens with fish in general, and closes with one in particular.

In the title story - the finest in the book - an ancient goldfish is determined to not only survive the filthy conditions created by his neglected owners, but also to outlive the marriage of the unhappy parents, despite the fact that Mom is only too willing to honour Fish with a respectful funeral.

"But Fish is alive. His big old carp gills clutch and lick every tiny trace of oxygen from the froth of depravity in the inexplicably determinate manner that only animals have. He will have nothing to do with this household." Yet, he is so important that as Dad departs, Fish is given a new home, "right next to the television set".

No one could dispute the versatility and imagination; the thematic and geographic range of the American short story. David Means is contributing his singular oddness and wayward genius to a great tradition.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times

The Secret Goldfish By David Means 4th Estate, 211pp. £14.99