From Far Around They Saw Us Burn by Alice Jolly review – tales of the misunderstood | Short stories

One February night in 1943, a fire broke out at a Catholic orphanage in Ireland. Thirty-five girls became trapped and died; the cook also lost her life. Every nun survived. An inquiry the same year reported appalling mistakes. The Sisters had requested that the fire be put out before the children were evacuated. The fire brigade was slow to respond and finally arrived with inadequate equipment. No one was found to blame.

In the remarkable title story of this debut collection, the dead girls narrate the tale of this terrifying night. It is superbly paced, to devastating effect. From the view of the town of Cavan and beyond, the focus tightens, line by line, to the neighbours who noticed the smoke, to the girls who “felt it first as a settling of boards, the scraping of a hinge, a sound like a yawn, a taste of ash at the back of the throat”. Soon, there are screams and prayers and calls to be saved.

From Far Around They Saw Us Burn is filled with people who are desperate to be heard: “please please will you just let me speak” begs the female narrator in Smooth and Sleek, a text that weaves together, paragraph by alternate paragraph, two distinct tales. One, a woman who is repeatedly raped in a house in a “God forgotten country” torn apart by war; the other, a man with a mortgage somewhere in England, who won’t stop talking about his childhood dream to own an Aston Martin.

As their stories unfold, you cannot help but look for links. The woman is trying to make herself heard above the sound of shelling, the man above some “background noise” that is never identified. Perhaps he is talking over her. Is she on the radio or TV? Is she the background noise? Is that why her words are written without punctuation? “I’m not listening,” he says towards the end. “I have listened enough. Why should I always be made to feel guilty about all this stuff?” It is impossible to read this in the UK in 2023 and not bristle with unease: so many wars out there, so much news vying for our attention, and still we carry on, consuming our desires, whatever they may be.

Jolly’s characters feel misunderstood. They try to communicate, to give their take on this world, but language trips them up. In Ray the Rottweiler, which won the VS Pritchett Memorial prize in 2014, an old misfit has lived for so long among dogs, he seems to have lost control of his tongue with humans.

Others are tiring of talk altogether, like the couple in The Stop, bickering in their car “without enthusiasm, our words spiteful but slow”. Indeed, Jolly is most acute when detailing marital strife. Mrs Hopper Is Waving Her Arms is the imagined and excruciating monologue of the wife of the more famous painter, “E”. Such is her frustration at her own thwarted career and the domestic misery she endures, she resorts to “scratching and biting” and refusing to eat.

Jolly’s narrators are mostly women; her novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was a stunning work of free verse told through the voice of an elderly maidservant at the end of the 19th century. Shortlisted for the Folio prize, it cemented Jolly’s reputation as a writer with an exemplary eye for detail and a fine ear for voice. In this collection, the female narrators are a more contemporary range of middle-aged sisters, older daughters, great aunts, unhappy mothers and matter-of-fact schoolgirls. Some of the most affecting stories, however, are told by men.

The “middle-aged bloke with a beer belly and greying hair” in For You, Hannah picks up a teenage hitchhiker, locks the car doors and drives her to an abandoned farm. Will he tear off her clothes and rape her? Will he throttle her to death? “I want to explain,” he tells himself, “but I can’t find the words.” He offers the terrified girl a cigarette. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. But please, promise me. Don’t ever do this again.” Such is Jolly’s breathtaking capacity to climb inside her characters’ skin, I found myself swayed by the depths of his emotional uncertainty.

It is this fearlessness, this indefatigable digging into human behaviour to reveal the uncomfortable truths of our lives, that gives Jolly’s writing real weight. In these stories, she takes on the bored and the lonely, even the perverts, the awkward and the bad. Where a less wise writer might have produced monsters, Jolly, with tenderness, finds their souls.

One February night in 1943, a fire broke out at a Catholic orphanage in Ireland. Thirty-five girls became trapped and died; the cook also lost her life. Every nun survived. An inquiry the same year reported appalling mistakes. The Sisters had requested that the fire be put out before the children were evacuated. The fire brigade was slow to respond and finally arrived with inadequate equipment. No one was found to blame.

In the remarkable title story of this debut collection, the dead girls narrate the tale of this terrifying night. It is superbly paced, to devastating effect. From the view of the town of Cavan and beyond, the focus tightens, line by line, to the neighbours who noticed the smoke, to the girls who “felt it first as a settling of boards, the scraping of a hinge, a sound like a yawn, a taste of ash at the back of the throat”. Soon, there are screams and prayers and calls to be saved.

From Far Around They Saw Us Burn is filled with people who are desperate to be heard: “please please will you just let me speak” begs the female narrator in Smooth and Sleek, a text that weaves together, paragraph by alternate paragraph, two distinct tales. One, a woman who is repeatedly raped in a house in a “God forgotten country” torn apart by war; the other, a man with a mortgage somewhere in England, who won’t stop talking about his childhood dream to own an Aston Martin.

As their stories unfold, you cannot help but look for links. The woman is trying to make herself heard above the sound of shelling, the man above some “background noise” that is never identified. Perhaps he is talking over her. Is she on the radio or TV? Is she the background noise? Is that why her words are written without punctuation? “I’m not listening,” he says towards the end. “I have listened enough. Why should I always be made to feel guilty about all this stuff?” It is impossible to read this in the UK in 2023 and not bristle with unease: so many wars out there, so much news vying for our attention, and still we carry on, consuming our desires, whatever they may be.

Jolly’s characters feel misunderstood. They try to communicate, to give their take on this world, but language trips them up. In Ray the Rottweiler, which won the VS Pritchett Memorial prize in 2014, an old misfit has lived for so long among dogs, he seems to have lost control of his tongue with humans.

Others are tiring of talk altogether, like the couple in The Stop, bickering in their car “without enthusiasm, our words spiteful but slow”. Indeed, Jolly is most acute when detailing marital strife. Mrs Hopper Is Waving Her Arms is the imagined and excruciating monologue of the wife of the more famous painter, “E”. Such is her frustration at her own thwarted career and the domestic misery she endures, she resorts to “scratching and biting” and refusing to eat.

Jolly’s narrators are mostly women; her novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was a stunning work of free verse told through the voice of an elderly maidservant at the end of the 19th century. Shortlisted for the Folio prize, it cemented Jolly’s reputation as a writer with an exemplary eye for detail and a fine ear for voice. In this collection, the female narrators are a more contemporary range of middle-aged sisters, older daughters, great aunts, unhappy mothers and matter-of-fact schoolgirls. Some of the most affecting stories, however, are told by men.

The “middle-aged bloke with a beer belly and greying hair” in For You, Hannah picks up a teenage hitchhiker, locks the car doors and drives her to an abandoned farm. Will he tear off her clothes and rape her? Will he throttle her to death? “I want to explain,” he tells himself, “but I can’t find the words.” He offers the terrified girl a cigarette. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. But please, promise me. Don’t ever do this again.” Such is Jolly’s breathtaking capacity to climb inside her characters’ skin, I found myself swayed by the depths of his emotional uncertainty.

It is this fearlessness, this indefatigable digging into human behaviour to reveal the uncomfortable truths of our lives, that gives Jolly’s writing real weight. In these stories, she takes on the bored and the lonely, even the perverts, the awkward and the bad. Where a less wise writer might have produced monsters, Jolly, with tenderness, finds their souls.