Eley Williams is heavily anthologised here. It’s no surprise. She is a startling, humorous, heart-breaking writer with a unique sentence-level dynamism. Attrib. will surely prove itself a modern classic.
“You once told me that nobody could ever fall in love with a person whose job involved boiling birds in liquor.”
‘Fears and Confessions of an Ortolan Chef’ is an anxious story of judgement, moral blind-spots, and love. The songbird gastronomy is experienced like a hyperviolent film, and the tension brought by this brutal practice constantly tests the fragile bones of a new relationship. As the relationship fractures, it is not only the Ortalan consumption that becomes taboo. As with much of Williams’ writing, the maelstrom of verbosity sharply outlines everything not put into words: the crux of the story.
Collected in Attrib. and other stories, Influx Press, 2017
A Personal Anthology 