Title: Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant
Author: Gary Langford
Publisher: XlibrisAU
ISBN: 978-1-51449-791-3
Pages: 148
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Reviewed by: Allison Walker
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Pacific Book Review
Hungry readers have a savory selection to choose from when they sit down to “Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant.” Divided into two menus, one for singles and one for couples, author Gary Langford serves up some truly bizarre, but always entertaining choices in his collection of short stories.
“Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant” is seated with a full array of characters, from heroes to villains, and everyone in between. The stories focus on mature topics; the characters are often tormented by their past or conflicted by their present. Plotlines address death, love and the strange space where they come crashing together. The stories are interspersed with hidden gems of wisdom; such as this line from “The Man Who Commuted From Medlow Bath”: “I congratulate the stationmaster on his garden. He knows that beauty exacts a fierce price and must be fought for at all costs.” After opening the collection with such solemn jewels of knowledge, Langford suddenly proves his diversity with a risqué scene in “The Man With The Golden Mouth” that will make you blush as if your granny just said a naughty word.
Langford’s collection is a tribute to his range as a storyteller. For example, his story “The Couple Who Watched Soap Operas,” experiments with style, and blurs the line between fiction and prose. However, if Langford should be known for one thing from “Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant,” it is deceptively banal stories with startling plot twists. While some of the stories are wonderfully unpredictable, others are woefully cliché. In an early story in the collection, a woman being stalked unwittingly invites the perpetrator into her home. In another, a famous taxidermist completes her collection with a human body. These are plot twists used time and time again, only made different by Langford’s unique and steady writing style. As an author, Langford has a gift for creating complex protagonists in a short amount of time, and many of his settings reflect that as well. To resort to overused plot lines such as the two examples above, simply seems like a waste of his gift for storytelling.
As a collection, “Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant” maintains an impressively consistent theme. Langford writes in a style that is uniquely his own, and rarely does his knack for surprise waver. Overall, Langford presents a series of short stories that are delightfully diverse, and thoroughly clever. Forget the days of rushing through lunchtime, “Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant” will make readers want to slow down and savor every dish.
