ON TRÀIGH LAR BEACH

In Beeaff’s linked short stories, a writer searches for inspiration among the objects littering a Scottish beach.

After her novella unexpectedly wins a prestigious prize, author Erica Winchat finds herself with an impressive two-book deal—and a crushing case of writer’s block. “I’m stagnant with fear,” she confesses to the reader. “I’m empty, deficient, inept. I’ve nothing to say and no words to say it with.” She and her husband have traveled to a village on a remote Scottish island, where Erica combs the beach, hoping that the landscape will stir her creativity. She discovers her muse in beach trash, of all things—objects that have washed up on the island’s shore. A packet of arthritis pills reveals the story of a certified nursing assistant at a convalescent home who takes a patient’s treatment into her own hands. A plastic cigarette lighter summons the night an aging Broadway actress, fresh off her comeback performance, encounters a pair of tourists in a park. A camera’s lens cap invokes the tale of a photographer who hears strange noises in the mist while taking pictures of Newfoundland’s oldest lighthouse. The book concludes with a novella about music fans who converge at the Chicago concert of the Scottish band they love only to find themselves in the midst of a tragedy. Beeaff weaves beautiful sentences, particularly when describing locations, as when Erica and her spouse ride a ferry between two of the Hebrides: “the small boat beat against the wind and the waves through one of the loneliest stretches of the planet I’ve ever seen. Distant black islands dulled with the rain. Plumes of spray nibbled at their base.” The 12 stories that make up the first section of the book are little more than vignettes, fizzling away before a narrative can take root; the aforementioned novella is the highlight of the collection, although it ultimately drifts into melodrama. Overall, the book’s form is an intriguing experiment that doesn’t quite seem to achieve its potential. Even so, Beeaff’s prose is of such high quality, page to page, that readers won’t want to put it down.

An ambitious, ocean-spanning collection of objects and tales.