Review: Any Other Mouth - Anneliese Mackintosh

A guest review by Jayne White

The foreword to this semi-autobiographical book consists of 3 short statements.

1. 68% happened.

        2. 32% did not happen.

3. I will never tell.

Any Other Mouth blurs the line between short story anthology and novel, as all the stories focus on the same central character, Gretchen, who is based largely on Anneliese Mackintosh herself. The author has taken some difficult experiences from her own life and some of her childhood memories and has fictionalised them in a series of short stories. Each story can be read as a standalone, but placed together like this they form a narrative which progresses whilst at the same time allowing space for reflection, memories and meditation.

When faced with an unusual form like this my reaction is to try to work out what the author is giving me that I wouldn’t have had if the story had been told in a more conventional way. In this instance there’s quite a lot. The author has produced stories which are quite varied. One of the great things about short stories is that they do give writers a chance to experiment with ways of telling the story that might be quite hard to sustain for a novel length work. As well as the standard first person narrative which you’d expect in a memoir, you’ve also got Doctors which is told in the second person. This story was included in The Best British Short Stories 2013 which I reviewed here last September and was enough on its own to make me take an interest in the author.

A Rough Guide To Grief, where the reader is told how to cope with bereavement by Gretchen (who has been to hell and back with hers) is conventional instruction for coping with grief interspersed with some of the things she has tried.

“Do things that make you feel better. Go for a walk. See friends for tea. Make a scrapbook. Become completely obsessed with sex because it feels like ‘the opposite of death’. Apply for bereavement counselling. Get very very drunk and call the Samaritans and tell them you want to die. See friends for cake. Cut a cross into each of your thighs with a razor blade. Go swimming once the wounds are healed.”

I found this instructional style interesting because it highlights how the conventional advice really doesn’t measure up to the depth of misery we can feel and it also challenges the reader to consider how they have coped or will cope with bereavement.

How to Be An Alcoholic Writer is a Twelve Step Programme with a difference:

“4 Try ‘morning drinking’.

In the morning, you’re at your least self-critical, so that’s an ideal time to reach for the box of wine under your bed. Take the box into the shower with you. Don’t know what happened last night? Never mind. At least you’ve got the box.”

This story is using promotional language to sell the idea of becoming an alcoholic which is a very interesting device to draw us in and consider what Gretchen’s life is like by the time she seeks advice.

The story, Daddy Smokes, has its own internal timeline which would be hard to do in a standard novel. The story is made up of a series of scenes over time concerning Gretchen’s father’s secret smoking, his den in the garden and his extensive stash of pornography which makes quite an impression on Gretchen.

“I don’t know what it is exactly, but as I’m I’m screwing up my eyes at the glossy pages, I’m feeling something I’ve never felt before. A mixture of disgust and excitement… Later that night, I can’t stop thinking about those women peeling themselves open with their fingers.”

I was quite impressed by this to be honest. So often bisexuality in novels is some kind of sudden late onset variety which surprises the character as much as the reader. It’s rather refreshing to see a teenager confused by the realisation that they are a little more than straight.

As well as providing an interesting variety of styles I think this anthology/novel form allows us to explore the character’s key emotions and responses more intensively than in a straightforward novel. I certainly felt I knew Gretchen quite intimately after reading it and that’s not just an sly allusion to the fact that there’s a lot of sex in this book. Several of the stories are centered on painful key emotional moments for the character but you don’t get bogged down because the next story will shift the focus.

There’s been a buzz lately around literary ‘bad girls’. I read an article by Helen Walsh recently who highlighted a double standard of what is acceptable from male protagonists compared to female ones.

“Smoking, wanking, boozing, fucking (especially underage girls – and boys, for that matter); snorting, scrapping, gobbing, fisting – any of the above is fair game for a male protagonist. Trangressive? Pah! But when you’re a Lady, such behaviour becomes deviant, shocking and morally reprehensible. I know this, because I have plucked these three accusatory barbs at random, from reviews of my books online.”

Gretchen only spits figuratively and as I recall she stops at 4 fingers rather than the entire fist, but she manages everything else and more. I can see that this might put some readers off; strong sexual content can make people uncomfortable. However, I hope that doesn’t happen here when the author has put so much of herself on the line. During the course of the story the complexity of the highly driven character and her struggle with her own illness, her father’s illness, her bereavement, her mental health challenges is delivered beautifully. There’s a great deal of humour in these stories and a lot of tenderness.

I’d definitely recommend giving this book a go. It’s in my personal top three of the year so far. If you need a little more convincing, one of the stories is available online as part of a showcase on the best of Scottish writing so you can sample it now.