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About Transported
Transported is my second collection of short fiction. It contains 27 stories, ranging from satire to nostalgia, Southland to outer space. It was published by Random House New Zealand, under their Vintage imprint, in June 2008.
You can buy Transported online from New Zealand Books Abroad (for both overseas and New Zealand sales), or Fishpond; or buy it at many good New Zealand bookshops. Transported was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
Looking to buy presents? Here's Ten Reasons Why Transported Makes a Great Present. The book's proving popular with older teens, not an easy group to buy presents for!
Here's the publishers' blurb, written by my excellent editor Claire Gummer, which describes the book very well:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
a half-day holiday decreeA well-known poet pursues his elusive muse; a Kiwi makes himself indispensable in Oz; a revolutionary fast-food franchise revs up Russia's economy; a racing-car driver is airborne; temperate Otago exports its kiwifruit worldwide; a Frenchman called Foucault puts in the hard yards at an antipodean dairy farm - all while water laps at our feet, our homes, our lives . . . With Tim Jones' stories you should expect the unexpected. This remarkably refreshing collection uses a lively mix of genres, taking readers on flights of fancy, transports of delight, and even occasional trips of nostalgia. Some of the stories are unique ways of looking at the everyday and ordinary, others take us out of this world. They are funny, moving, insightful and, above all, delightfully different.
Essential Information
TITLE Transported
AUTHOR Tim Jones
PUBLISHER Random House New Zealand (Vintage imprint)
DATE June 2008
FORMAT Paperback
EXTENT 272 pages
ISBN 978-1-86941-984-4
RRP NZ$27.99
DISTRIBUTOR: Random House New Zealand
I'll update availability information for Transported on my blog. You can also read the latest news about Transported on my blog, Tim Jones: Books in the Trees.
Stories Included
Stories published for the first time in Transported are marked with an asterisk. For prior publication details of the other stories, see my Short Fiction page. I've included links to some of the stories available online.
Rat Up a Drainpipe
Said Sheree*
When She Came Walking
A Short History of the 20th Century, With Fries
Win a Day with Mikhail Gorbachev!
The New Neighbours*
Sisters
Not Wanted on Voyage
Jim Clark*
Alarm
The Wadestown Shore*
Filling the Isles*
Homestay
The Visit of M. Foucault to His Brother Wayne
Borges and I
Measureless to Man*
The Seeing*
After the War
Best Practice*
Robinson in Love*
Going Under*
Morning on Volkov
The Royal Tour
Queen of the Snows
Going to the People
Cold Storage*
Books in the Trees
Recognition, Interviews and Reviews
Recognition
Transported was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The judges for the award decided to skip the shortlist and give the award directly to Jhumpa Lahiri for her excellent collection Unaccustomed Earth.
"The New Neighbours", a story first published in Transported, has been selected for inclusion in the Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories, edited by Paula Morris, to be published in September 2009.
Interviews
There are interviews with me about Transported online at The Good Books Guide and The Short Review.
You can also listen to a podcast of Ruth Todd's Plains FM interview with me about the book.
Reviews
In New Zealand Books, reviewer Isa Moynihan called Transported "dazzling and highly entertaining". You can read more of this review on my blog.
In the Nelson Mail, reviewer Jessica Le Bas had some complimentary things to say about Transported:
I read Jones's first story, Rat Up a Drainpipe, and couldn't put it down. I laughed out loud, and felt unusually good. It was fast paced and full of quirky incidents. When it ended I wanted more.
Typical of Jones, Transported crosses genres. There's science fiction, comedy and satire, and even a few tales involving global warming. The Wadestone [sic] Shore has Pete rowing around a drowned Wellington foreshore between high-rise buildings, trawling for treasures. The seat of government has moved to Taupo. You have to laugh, but should we?
Jones's bag of literary tricks is witty and refreshingly humorous. He's not new to the literary scene, but with Transported, his second short story collection, he will not linger in the background again. Bring it on, Tim Jones!
Here are links to some other reviews and assessments available online:
- Rosemarie Smith's review for the Southland Times. Rosemarie is very positive about the book, notes that I'm a former Southlander and that several stories will especially appeal to Southlanders, and says "The originality, gentle humour and sheer variety in this collection makes it clear why former Southlander Tim Jones was long-listed for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award alongside established New Zealand writers Elizabeth Smither and Witi Ihimaera and Sue Orr."
- Helen Rickerby's take on Transported. Helen says "In here, you've got orcs, philosophers, astronauts, poets (actually, the astronaut is a poet), flying people, politicians, alien neighbours, people in the future, people from the past, a girl who can make inanimate objects move just by walking past them. This isn't your typical short story collection, and that's what's so cool about it."
- Mike Crowl's review for Bookstove.com. Mike says: "Tim Jones' Transported is a pleasant surprise. None of the tales have that kind of super-seriousness about them that's typical of NZ short stories. Instead, they're an intriguing mix of tongue-in-cheek, subtle humour, history turned inside out, and sci-fi."
- Transported by Breadth of Imagination, Mandy Evans' review from the Marlborough Express.
- The Listener review by Steve Walker - and my subsequent reaction to it.
- Trevor Reeves' review in Southern Ocean Review (about halfway down this reviews column)
- Majella Cullinane's review in The Short Review (UK).
Email me at timjones@actrix.co.nz