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J. John le Grange studied creative writing at the University of Cape Town. He was a place winner in the 2000 Seoul Creative Writing competition and briefly edited South Africa Writing, a magazine for creative writers in South Africa. He is the author of Wolseley, which received a commendation from the 2015 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award. He lives in Cape Town.
Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite
Tales for the Train by J. John le Grange is like coming unexpectedly upon a classic, culturally correct, amazing Japanese gift. First, it is wrapped inside a simple cover with an enigmatic title. Upon opening such a gift, one finds inside a collection of thematically related items – each preceded by a beautiful and suggestive print – which when taken altogether create a singularly thoughtful moment of extraordinary beauty within a mysterious simplicity. One must open up one’s heart in order to appreciate the wholeness contained inside this moment. Such is also true of this melancholy little book – a novella made from nine individual tales accompanied by suggestively mystifying photographs - surrounding the profoundly disturbing moment when a body falls to its death.
Set within a Japanese seaside village, Tales for the Train begins with The Tale of The Inspector, revealing the initiating event that defines the moment author J. John le Grange offers to his readers the strangest form of gift: the suicide of an anonymous human being. As the inspector and the reader are left to ponder on this extraordinary thing, le Grange moves on to other tales whose meanings hover ever closely by: the young girl prostituted by her mother, the woman who saw the body fall from nowhere, the neighbor boy in love, the dying father plagued by demons, the shame-filled client of the girl, the brother besieged by life ... with every tale alluding back to the first one when the body fell to earth.
The ending of this book is swift, the unwrapping soon complete. And one is left with the most incredible array of feelings, almost as if there were nothing left to feel. In the end, this is the final enigma of this strange, exquisite tale: how can there be such beauty in the emptiness of life, and so much life in the emptiness of such beauty? The gift remains a mystery.
