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Reviewed by
Jason Makansi The Rainbow Man, a mythical story-telling gadfly, at
once the court jester, town drunk, and muttering old sage, introduces each story
in this artful collection, where a sense of dignity seems to permeate the space
around the words, and the circus of colorful characters that speak them. We're
introduced to a psychological therapist who decides you, dear reader, are his
next "chat up," a strange tenant who just seems to start talking to you about
how "normal" he isn't, and a man who talks to you about his comatose wife. No,
wait. He's talking to his comatose wife!
A multi-layered, sophisticated story, Sam, one of the longer ones of the collection,
deals with recovery from a serious head injury, and the uncovering of two people
from the same brain. Through this story, the reader embarks on a journey through
the "firings of tiny brain cells and the pattern of their
interconnection."
Gardiner uses the word parable to describe his stories.
Indeed, Man the Pumps! which, lo and
behold, even begins with "Once upon a time," is a thinly veiled send-up of
wayward faith and terrorism perpetrated in the name of religion, mostly pointing
at radical Islam. But it works. The Claddagh
Brooch features a man regretting late in life not acting on a crush at
work. The day he finally gets up the nerve to express his feelings is the day
she leaves their place of work to get married. Moral of this parable: Time is
short; don't waste it. Again, simple, almost child-like, but it
works.
Even in a rather gruesome story, New Gloves, there's a dignity to the dialogue
as one character terrorizes another with the threat of an infectious disease in
retaliation for being accosted. You won't believe what the gloves cover up. At
the other end of the spectrum is Cambridge, one of those stories where nothing
really happens, but the situation keeps you reading along. In this case, a man
and a woman, both in other relationships, meet each year at a music festival
with the only rule that they must tell each other the truth. Their mutual
understanding and care can't be compromised even by the fact that they tell each
other about their other affairs and trysts, too. Again, there's a dignity to the
story, the way it makes us yearn for mutual respect, though we know this ideal
relationship doesn't come close to reflecting the messiness of real life, and
rampant infidelity is the norm for this "couple." New Gloves and Cambridge certainly demonstrate Gardiner's
range with his material.
My personal favorite, Light of the World, harkens back to Twain and
the traveling hucksters making a buck off that "old time religion". Reverend
Fishbone offers salvation and healing, for a price, but the reader gets an
insidious message about the relativity of evil.
"'Folks either help themselves or nobody helps them.
Everything just depends on what you've got going on in here.' He tapped his
head. 'There ain't nothing out there. Just the dark.'"
The last line is biblical in modern day proportion:
"Artificial light manufactured by mankind to hold the darkness of the world at
bay." In the end, Rainbow Man delivers. Dignified, simply told tales, wise
beyond their words.
Read the story Light of
the World from this collection on DavidGardiner.net |
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Reviews of The Rainbow Man (first edition, 2003)
The stories themselves are a joy. They are very much that very thing,
short stories, which now tend to be disappearing in a welter of "Art".
...Gardiner has the talent to depict character successfully in few words
and work that character logically in his given setting.
...He creates scenes and characters which work and which make you think.
Review by Chris Williams
Tregolwyn Book Reviews
You pick up this book with its charming exterior thinking you are going
read a collection of equally charming short stories, seasoned perhaps
with a little grit to raise it above the tame, but what you actually get
are jawdropping vignettes of the sort of lives only a writer of David's
calibre could relate with such vivid and at times disturbing realism
and all this whilst at the same time managing to avoiding the usual, the
jaded and the hackneyed to ensnare your attention. Nothing is as it
seems and the more mundane the surface, the more layers there appear to
be; we are talking about a true literary onion here, multi-layered and
quite able to bring tears to your eyes.
Binnacle Press Book of the Month Review
...without exception all twenty-three of the stories, exploring life
both familiar and unfamiliar, leave the reader with something to think
about, and linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.
The Irish Emigrant
BookView Ireland :: November, 2003 :: Issue No.100
James Joyce meets Ray Bradbury in David Gardiner’s collection of tales
wrapped in the imaginings of children who hear a Cassandra/Wandering
Jew-type sage mutter such things as “Ye know the trouble with youse
northerners, your memories is too bloody long!”
From the secretly vengeful ex-nun propitiating a religious fraud on a
smugly progressive church in “Immaculata” to the lovelorn man and woman
in “Blind Date,” each thinking the other is too good for them,
Gardiner’s characters face the loneliness of illusion and the loneliness
of truth. As the war criminal of “Letting Go” asks, “That’s all you
want of me? The truth? A small thing like that?”
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SECOND EDITION (CONTAINING TWO EXTRA STORIES) PUBLISHED JUNE 2010 BY MERILANG PRESS at £7.99 
