#7: Endgame by Louise Swinn
Available in: Best Australian Stories 2007
Also featured in the anthology: Cate Kennedy, Alice Pung, Patrick Cullen, Paddy O’Reilly
Lou Swinn is a publisher, review and small-press advocate. She wears a hat far better than most and is also one of the nicest people I know.
Once you read Endgame in Best Australian Stories 2007, you’ll see she’s one hell of a writer too. For unlike David Malouf, who is also a great writer, but whose story length here ventures well into Benjamin Button territory, Lou knows that sometimes the best stories are also the shortest.
The Story
An unnamed narrator sits in class and remembers what has come and gone in a particularly tough year. His mother has passed away, burnt to death in a fire, and now he has to get by, despite the aftershocks from the enormity of what has happened.
He looks after his brother and two sisters while his father works long hours. On this particular day in school, he wins an award for a piece he wrote for the local paper.
Later in the day, his English teacher, Tanya, takes him aside and asks if he wants to be in the play this year. Unable to hold in the emotion any longer, he starts to cry, though he tries his best to hold it in. His tears lead on to a wholly fulfilling and unexpected denouement.
Why it Sticks
Endgame is a simply told story steeped in everyday reality. The vision of the narrator, clearly upset, but trying to fill the gap his mother has left (he makes Milo for his sister, strives to cook chicken tandoori, and irons his own shirts) is heartbreaking. We find him and his sister forced to grow up far too quickly, struggling to get by in the adult world, when they’ve barely gotten used to being teenagers.
As a short story, Endgame shows what can be done with a strong voice and the right setting. Had the story been set solely at school, we would lose the fleshing out that comes from the characters interactions with the rest of his family. Had it been set solely at home, we would have lost the emotional trajectory of the character’s journey. And, by choosing a first person narration, we get an intimacy that would have been lost in the third person.
The best short stories make you feel as much as they make you think, and with this criteria in mind, Louise Swinn’s Endgame well and truly earns its place in Best Australian Stories 2007.
Note: This story echoes Samuel Beckett's play of the same name. The play's implication is that the characters live in an unchanging, static state, with each day containing the actions and reactions of the day before, until each event takes on an almost ritualistic quality. Given the events in Swinn's Endgame, we find a similar journey for the motherless children, each adapting as best they can to a forever changed world.
