A dragon moulded from sand bears witness to the display before its fiery soulful eyes. A homeless man turned messiah taps into the bleeding heart of a Madonna from which a miracle was packaged and sold to the masses. Poetic Mandarin spills from the mouth of a lover in the throes of passion, only to vanish with him without a trace.

We find ourselves in Shanghai, in different corners of Australia, tucked away into a rural Irish town, on the beach and in the cityscape, in memories of love painfully lost, brushed shoulders with impassioned revolutionaries, gilded in empty withering glamour, learning what to do with the grief born from loss or indifference, wrapped in all the complexities of the human experience in this delightful tapestry of poetry and prose.

Spoiler-Free Plot

This book presents readers with a buffet of themes to gorge themselves on. Eighteen distinct pieces carry you from childhood through to old age with pit stops at various points in between. Each time experiencing a broad range of emotions laid bare in profoundly personal vignettes.

Readers are treated to glimpses of both the mundanity and the complexities of life. The monumental events and the casual comforts. Displays of human nature, sometimes oscillating between opposing viewpoints, only visible for long enough to internalise their essence without giving too much away; eliminating the potential to turn stale maintains their evergreen condition.

Some of the poetry requires a quiet moment to glean its deeper meaning, some is more transparent, all of it is unapologetically candid. Expect to find satisfaction with ambiguous endings that leave you feeling content despite their lack of defined finality.

My Take on Under Brambles

If most stories in this collection are fiction and the remainder drawn from the tumult of real life experiences, you cannot tell one from the other. No matter the familiarity we may have with one story over the rest in relation to the finer details, there is still an immense sense of kinship, or rather a close affinity with each character and their highlighted situations, because of how expressively they are written.

Because we have all felt frustration, shame, despair, misplaced hope, grief, optimism that rejects insurmountable odds, the intimacy derived from living in close quarters with another, all of these universal sentiments, we are able to connect with characters who would be complete strangers otherwise in our collective participation in the emotional aspects of the human condition.

The stories feel plausible. Tied to reality by their authenticity. Even some of the more unconventional ones.

My favourite example that fits this theory would be “I Think it’s Going to Rain”. I can imagine someone, perhaps in Brisbane or some far flung city thousands of miles away from the location that inspired the story, slack-jawed as they rip through the thirteen odd pages dedicated to Nina Simone and her devotees. An eerie feeling sinking in as they recall a similar chapter in their own lives. Maybe with a different musician, a different instrument, different weather. The panic of having unwittingly caused the death of a celebrity or any other person they view with such reverence.

Same with the title “Three”. Likely viewed as a distant memory by an adult who was once the child in their own version of the tale. The external pressures of their past situation offered up by their mother piece by piece over a cup of afternoon tea. All things they were once oblivious to when compared to the importance of trains, dinosaurs, barbie dolls or cartoons. Providing them a retrospective point of view of an era in their lives. A handful of others inspire the same realism.

Having mentioned this element prior, I would like to expand on it a little more. In most short story collections I have read in my time, humour is largely nonexistent. The heavy weight of the subject matter turns what should be a quick, pleasant pastime into something one must wade through with difficulty.

I genuinely laughed and smiled at parts of Ralph the Messiah, Elvis in Paradise, Fluency, and others. Instead of feeling unsettled, or a tad unbalanced at the end of the collection, I felt as though I had found an equilibrium, having struck a balance in the acceptance of the highs and lows of life portrayed between the pages.

Margaretta James has a magical way with words. If there was ever a need for a visual representation to express the richness of her work, it would come in the form of a type of alchemy. Her words would be the substrate, the intensity of the affections they invoke becomes the fuel. Margaretta would already be considered a master of the craft, and far wealthier than anyone could imagine, which still holds true for her literary achievement.

Age Rating

16 years and above

Content Warnings

Dementia, Profanity, Religious Themes, Sexual Content, Sexual Violence.

---