Rachel Trezise’s semi-autobiographical novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was published in 2000, to critical acclaim and a place on the Orange Futures List, is studied in Welsh Universities and at the University of Montreal. Her short story collection Fresh Apples, won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Trezise was writer in residence at the University of Texas in spring 2007. Dial M for Merthyr won the inaugural Max Boyce Prize in 2010. Her radio play Lemon Meringue Pie was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2008. Sixteen Shades of Crazy was published by Blue Door in 2010. Her work has been translated into several languages and published all over the world.
With her second collection of short stories, Rachel Trezise grants
an authentic and uniquely illustrated voice to each of her
compellingly complex characters. The trials and traumas described
in Cosmic Latte are particular to the disempowered individuals
forced to confront them alone. But what unites these characters is
their peripheral existence, the emotional displacement that
isolates them from their immediate surrounding worlds. Trezise’s
use of place and movement is central to her effective portrayal of
transient people. Immigrants, migrants, escapees and tourists,
these characters’ psychological dislocations are paralleled by the
physical ‘elsewhere’, their loneliness seemingly symptomatic of a
failure to communicate with the comforts of a collective identity.
Among the eleven central characters in this collection, we meet a
horny Jewish teenager, a grief-stricken stag-party member, a
south-east Asian immigrant denied his ancestral heritage and a
resigned romantic separated from her family by a political wall
made manifest. Whether they are geographical, generational,
religious or cultural, Trezise explores the boundaries that limit
human assimilation and self-possession. Though their attempts may
often seem ineffectual – playing with toys, sexual encounters or
criminal activity – the characters in Cosmic Latte still manage to
display, in small ways, the universally unfailing motivation to
survive a desperate situation. Cosmic Latte achieves a tone that is
at once unapologetically tragic and momentarily comic. Trezise’s
impactful prose is characteristically punctuated by her stylistic
exploits, witty observations and punchy dialogue.
*Pearl Newton @ www.gwales.com*
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