Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & [Hardcover]

Anna Tambour (Author), Keith Brooke (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2003

Temptation, indulgence, exploration and shortcuts. Love and compulsion. An ocean in Kansas, the Magic Lino, the real story behind the one told by Robert Louis Stevenson, a chef dying of ennui, gathering bluebirds, paying with candywrap. And the greatest story ever told--by Asher E. Treat, of course. The glorious chaos of singing, prancing, perfumed and stinking, the dead and the busy, tragic and achingly otherwise--life itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A winning, offbeat sensibility is at work in the 31 stories and poems that make up Tambour's first fiction collection, finding the lighter side of potentially sober themes and giving humanist spins to scientific ideas. "Me-Too" winks at the unpredictability of human behavior in its account of cloned children corrupted by a mutant genius gene who upset their ordinary family's chances for a normal life in their class-conscious society. The title story is a giddy study of the socioeconomic impact cannibalism has on a tropical island, once the inhabitants discover that their flesh is a highly desirable-and lucrative-commodity on the gourmet market. Certain tales show an exotic spirit that puts them squarely in the magic realist tradition, while others reflect self-consciousness about the craft of writing, as in "Call Me Omniscient," a clever trifle in which the personified omniscient viewpoint discusses the difficulty it has working with a mediocre romance writer. Several of the best stories are narrated from unconventional perspectives, such as "Valley of the Sugars of Salt," which includes the thoughts of an orchard of trees whose ugly but delicious fruit offer a lovely parable on inner beauty. All but a handful of these stories are original to the volume, which makes a fine introduction to a writer little known outsider her native Australia.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Prime (September 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894815947
• ISBN-13: 978-1894815949
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,504,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Stories that are exactly what they are, December 16, 2011

By 

Julie A. Turner "Adam Browne" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (Kindle Edition)

I'd like to compose a nice long essay here, because this book is worthy of at least that, but am tossing this off while my daughter watches tv, and I don't want her to watch too much, so here we go, just quickly:

I don't read much fiction these days, and if I do, even less than not much of it is Australian. But Anna Tambour; what a voice, what a mind. It's a thrill to get down inside it, where it's pleasantly rank, a bit caramelly; the mind of someone who's done the hard work of investigating interesting things really deeply; especially natural things; her hands healthily dirty with all her fearless digging down where the slaters and worms are.

There's a fable about seven scientists that everyone in the sciences should read; there's a story about medlars that gave me a vertiginous feeling, a feeling like, wait, is this my world, or have I been completely blind all along...

Another about cannibals, another about higher dimensional murder -- and so on - none of them science fiction, as such -- they are what they are. Tambour fiction...

Ok, switching off the tv now.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful, quirky and beautifully written, March 1, 2011

By 

Keith Brooke - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (Kindle Edition)

Anna Tambour is one of my favourite short story writers, which is why I talked my way into writing the foreword for the print edition of this collection. In that foreword, I wrote (among other things):

~
Somewhere deep in the Australian bush, surrounded by an extended family of cockatiels and koalas, wombats, kangaroos and fruit bats, there lives an author who writes miraculous little fabulations, each crammed with invention and insight and humour and above all a quirky difference that makes them quite unlike the work of any other. She tends these creations, breathes life into each one and lets them loose into a far-too-often-uncaring world.

These little gems, for all their vitality, cannot exist in a vacuum. Publishing is an industry, and a competitive one at that. In my own country alone (albeit at the opposite end of the world to the one where these stories are created), tens of thousands of new books are published every year; among them, so many talented voices are stifled, drowned out in the clamour. These voices need nurturing, they need attention -- particularly the special ones, like that of our whimsical outback author.

Fortunately, Anna Tambour is starting to get that attention, quite deservedly so, and she is certain to get much more. Even in a crowded, clamorous throng, some voices stand out above the others -- the loudest, for sure, but also those that are different, the ones with wit and wisdom, the ones that dare to surprise.

Anna Tambour's is one of the voices that stands out, and for all the best reasons.

I talked my way into writing the foreword to this volume on the strength of a handful of off-beat and quite brilliant stories Anna submitted to me for the infinity plus website. Now, having read all the contents of this collection, I have been struck over and over by a series of triumphs.

Much of the time, I have read with a smile on my face, not only for the wit these stories contain, but for the sheer audacity of the author. In many cases, I start reading and then find myself wondering how on earth she expects to get away with this premise or that. Describe them to a friend, as I did recently, and they often sound, to put it bluntly, quite silly. There's one about Robert Louis Stevenson's travels through the Cévennes which is told by his donkey; another about a magical piece of linoleum; and another which is a potted history of food, and God's distaste for our tastes, not forgetting His secret garden atop Everest...

Yet, just as that how-could-she-try-this thought strikes, so it is dismissed by a twist, a turn, a feint, and you find yourself swallowed up in whichever strange conceit is currently being explored.
~

I concluded by saying:

There: you should be prepared now. Prepared to be unprepared. Be careful in here. There is an author at play within these pages. Anna Tambour is having fun with you and she has a wicked sense of humour.

You have been warned.