Author: Sue Orr. Publisher : Vintage, (3/5).
You are told all your life to never judge a book by its cover, but secretly everyone does. The cover of From Under the Overcoat by Sue Orr isn’t exactly the most appealing. It first gave me the impression that it would be a light-hearted, cheap and not particularly absorbing book. However, the aphorism doesn’t exist without reason because this collection of short stories wasn’t like my expectations at all.
To make a book outstanding you need an innovative concept. Orr certainly attempts this with each story in this collection being linked to a famous classic including “Sleeping Beauty” by the Brothers Grimm and “The Dolls House” by Katherine Mansfield, and also explores other concepts such as Maori legend. The stories collectively are inspired by the illustrious story “The Overcoat” by great writer Nikolay Gogol, which is included at the back and is well worth reading. Overall the collection attempts to celebrate the techniques, revolutionary literary ideas and concepts explored by the great writers to whom Orr links each of her stories. The extent of her research, including into our own country’s history, is impressive.
However, I found her “voice” to be a little clunky, the dialogue stiff and overall the writing very obvious. It isn’t boundary-pushing either. There is no exploration of language, techniques, structure; all in all she’s playing it a little safe (despite what Fiona Kidman says on the front cover). However, writing an incredible short story is next to impossible. I will give Orr credit because her introduction was very interesting and there was some compelling stuff in there.
From Under the Overcoat
