Timothy Willis Sanders's Orange Juice: A Review by Matt Cook

Timothy Willis Sanders’s Orange Juice is the second release from Awesome Machine, a sideline of the well-established Publishing Genius, and the remit for the little brother press is specific. Through short runs (125) of interesting projects, without all the hassle of a proper launch, and lots of freebie discussion copies floating around, it’s no-nonsense fiction that’s supposed to be more fun to make, read and talk about.

So is it? I wouldn’t say Orange Juice was more fun to read than anything else I’ve read recently, but it was great fiction. So if it works for Adam Robinson and Timothy Willis Sanders, it works for me.

Orange Juice comprises 9 short stories. Most of them study a familiar dynamic, (parents/children/friends/partners) in apparent freefall, photographing it in such slow motion that you start to question whether it’s moving at all.

Reflecting its title, the writing is delivered in vivid gulps. ‘Orange Juice itself is less than 2 pages long, but it still manages to offer a convincing portrayal of family life in what approaches a K-Mart realism vein. The short, stabbing descriptive sentences are literal and stilted, but tell you all you need to know. Such as when Bill crystalises a strained family environment in just 3 words:

“Goddamn your son.”

‘Out there Dancing’ is shorter still, and even more “K-Mart” thanks to the supermarket setting, before ‘Cat Stuff’ provides one of the most substantial stories in the book, and the inspiration for

the cover. In the story, Jared is a teenager going to a party at a friend’s house—a house filled with cat stuff. Again the writing is taut and full of great, short lines. In fact the pared down style brings more meaning the less there is.

“He looked at the party.”

And

“I will. I just. I think people need to go soon.”

The awkward teenage interaction seeps through lines that go out of their way not to try and describe it. Jared steals from a girl’s purse, and later from the host’s parent’s room, without reason. The final line aligns these acts with a fleeting vision of himself through the eyes of the girl he likes, but who never appears in the story. It’s a whisper of epiphany, behind a fog of teenage self-absorption and weed smoke, with a beautiful, paradoxical finality and openness.

‘Sweet Potatoes’ charts Keith’s trip to visit his girlfriend’s family for thanksgiving. Immersing himself in the new, very liberal family, his attempts to fit in provide more subtly cast insights.

Ben came down the stairs. He scratched his beard. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. I thought, “No. I need to relax. I opened  my eyes and said “G’morning” in a folksy way.

The weather is constantly on his mind, and he checks reports on his home town alongside worrying about what time to call his mother and step-father, considering the prospect of them being wiped out by a tornado. It culminates in one of the best moments in the book, both in terms of understated dialogue and emotion, when he finally calls his mother.

“I miss those sweet potatoes.”

“Hmm.”

“We didn’t have sweet potatoes. Even if we did I wouldn’t eat it.”

“Ha. Hm.”

“I’ll only eat the sweet potatoes you make. With the marshmallows.”

“Haha. Okay.”

The rhythm and atmosphere of the final lines are beautifully measured, and a high point in the book, which then seems to enter a new phase and direction. ‘You Have a Crush on Kellz’ features characters with the names of celebrities, who are evidently not those people, much like Tao Lin’s recent Richard Yates. The effect of layering an otherwise sparse teen story under the empty showbiz glamour of yesteryear R n’ B stars creates a far different result, a very clever one. The blingy entertainment universe of R Kelly and pals is mirrored in the mall-based multiplex cinema that the “normal” characters work and socialize in. Lines like –

Funny—you remind me of my jeep, I want to ride it.

– are really funny, and do feel simultaneously like something a kid might think, or R n’ B star might sing. The story is built around a tough guy vs little guy exchange, the title derived from the single attempt the main character – cinema employee “R Kelly” – has at being a tough, smooth guy himself, ultimately being intimidated and humiliated at the end. While the themes are clever, they require more extrapolation than the earlier stories, and don’t feel quite as satisfying.

‘Infinity Gauntlet’ is about an existential crisis for a girl trapped between a outgoing lover, Dan, and a secret new lover, also named Dan. The writing frequently focuses on tiny details she is looking at while procrastinating her delivery of the bad news, and it’s a realistic unreality, with a sense of looming awful duty. But there isn’t as much good character stuff as the early stories, and the same is even more true of ‘Vacation Time’ and ‘Driver License’, both of which retain the style but not the pangs of truth at the heart of the earlier stories. Dig deep in ‘Driver License’ and you’ll find a subtle study of attraction that is interesting, but a little too subtle for the rewards.

The final story ‘Rue de Something’ is an atmospheric, slightly anxious journey through the streets of an unnamed French city. Always moving, encountering random objects and people, there are lots of “Rue” and lots of “something”. It’s fluid and fat, like the river the characters ride down, and more thematically broad than anything else in the book. There are more superb, minimal lines, like this, which starts a paragraph and comes out of nowhere:

“I breathe and begin walking.”

The pace and spirit lift in this story, a nice crescendo to the collection, and the attention to detail in the forecasting keeps the veering strands of narrative together. Outside a museum Michael sees a fountain with babies pissing in it and says:

“This means something, I just don’t care what.”

This feels apt, as the same could be said of certain moments in these stories. There is risk in writing in a way that’s so hard to pin down. Just as there is in publishing easy to acquire, fun stories – the risk that people don’t take it as seriously as they should. But the rewards are high too, and Orange Juice deserves to be a success for Awesome Machine. In no way is it lightweight fiction. Though it is playful and experimental, it should be taken seriously. Because when it’s good, it’s very good, and bears rereading.

So grab a copy, read it, and talk about it. If you do, they might make some more.

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Matt Cook is a short story writer living in Manchester.