Temptation: A User’s Guide: (Salt Modern Fiction)

Lush Library Recommends: Anna James’ Books for 2018 Variations and fugue on the theme of obsession Vesna Main disturbs our self-image as educated, reasonable and ironic people who read modernist fiction. She disturbs us because we recognise ourselves in her obsessive and bloody-minded characters as they are pushed to the extreme. But they are only too human and seek love, just like us. This is a collection of twenty short stories of different lengths and written in a variety of styles. Main writes about characters whose passion borders on obsession and who are seeking love and companionship but are doomed to remain alone, with their sense of personal failure as the only company.

About the Author :
Vesna Main was born in Zagreb, Croatia, where she studied Comparative Literature, before obtaining a Phd in Elizabethan Studies from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. She later worked as a journalist, lecturer and arts administrator. Her published fiction includes a short story collection, Temptation (Salt, 2018), a novel-in-dialogue, Good Day? (Salt, 2019), which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths prize, an autofiction, Only A Lodger … And Hardly That (Seagull Books 2020), and a novella, ‘Bruno and Adèle’ in Shorts III (Platypus Press, 2021). Two of her stories are published in Best British Short Stories (Salt 2017, 2019); many others have appeared in journals in print and online. In her writing, Main is interested in telling stories in ways that explore and extend the boundaries of the narrative genre.

Review :
In the opening pages of Vesna Main’s short story collection we meet two women – both objects of the male gaze but under very different circumstances. The first story references EastEnders, the second the Salon des Refuses, challenging the reader’s moral perception and demonstrating the nuances of consent. Themes like these emerge throughout the otherwise disconnected 20 stories in the Croatian author’s collection. They are introduced with a quote by Alberto Manguel from his novel All Men Are Liars: “It is strange that no reader ever understood that my only subject is love.” The desire to be loved runs throughout Temptation, but there are no happily-everafters here. In these beautifully observed stories, Main deftly explores love’s myriad forms. Lush Library Recommends: Anna James’ Books for 2018 Another collection of short stories, this one from Croatian writer Main, these look at ideas of loneliness, passion and obsession and the sometimes grey areas between them. In these experimental stories of different lengths and styles, her characters include a prostitute turned murderer, a self-destructive book collection and a perfectionist dinner party hostess. Main is excellent at building suspense, which is very difficult to achieve effectively in a short story. The successful development and maintenance of suspense is the difference between plucking delicately on a string to set up a subtle, subliminal vibration of psychological discomfort, rather than sawing on it to create a jarring noise which just irritates. Main is a writer who works subliminal for all it’s worth. Main’s stories are vivid, strange, thrillingly brief and filled with sex, violence and the banal horror of daily life. They are unusual tales filled with often unlikeable characters. Temptation is for you if you like witty, sharp dialogue, experimental modernist fiction and stories which speak to the darkest corner of ourselves.