The hunter, and other stories of men by David Cohen
Transit Lounge, 2018. ISBN 9781925760064. Short stories.
(Age: Adult) Ibis have so flourished on a building site that they
have become like a plague, causing problems for the project. Henrik
the site manager aka 'the hunter' has to come up with a solution.
After spending all day, every day, watching the birds, wearing a gas
mask, Henrik has the answer... at least for the time being.
'The Hunter' is the first in this collection of stories about men,
and if one were to attribute a theme to the collection, it could be one
of the intricacies of thought in pursuing a problem until its
resolution (or non-resolution) - all sorts of problems and strange
situations, from the mysterious deliveries to the archivist, the
woodcutter posing in the forest, the recalcitrant recycler, the
traveller with Jerusalem Syndrome, the man always in the same bus
seat, the pioneering cabin builder. Cohen creates many bizarre
situations for us to consider - with a curious intellectual
detachment. It is perhaps only in the story of the archivist that
emotion finds a brief moment, as we gradually discover the dilemma
of the female delivery person. Women, and emotion, generally do not
have a large role in Cohen's stories; they are, after all, 'stories
of men'.
Helen Eddy