Free choice as blessing and curse

 A KEY impression that emerges in the short-story collections of Bangkok resident Deryck Whittaker is one of architecture. The reader might imagine the writer labouring over blueprints, charting out the structure episode by episode, adding and subtracting components, firming up the edifice, wasting no materials, ensuring that all is sound. Perhaps a vast map on one wall is crisscrossed with threads in various hues, aligning the connections and pathways of ideas.
Artfully designed by a man of impeccably good taste (Whittaker’s 2014 story collection “Cheese” was just as erudite and brilliant), the building we watch being erected is meticulous in its carefully considered detail and as welcoming as could be. Even the gloomier rooms and haunted hallways entrance the emotions and beg for repeated return visits.
“The Colours We Choose” does indeed play with colours in most of the 30 short stories presented, but read the title as “the choices we make” and be prepared for a meditation on the consequences that ensue. One of the tales, “Pinball Wizard”, examines quite painstakingly the ramifications of this supposedly divine gift of free choice.
There are gothic wings, classical and ultramodern wings to this edifice, but perhaps the keystone is found in the story that shares the book’s title.

Bangkok-based British writer Deryck Whittaker's second collection of short stories has all the wonder of great architecutre and all the sensual diversity of a garden in bloom.

Something of an epic for a short story, it traces recent human history through that of a particular London rowhouse and its marvellously diverse occupants, its builders and its neighbours. Each chapter of the unfolding pageant, whether several pages or a paragraph, is remarkable.
“Edible Leather” opens the book with a snapshot of Thailand. A visiting businessman’s valuables fall into the hands of a Thai youth who, in his predicament and choices, presents the foreigner with a mirror by which to examine his own life and decide what’s truly valuable.
In “Pinball Wizard”, an English couple have left their favourite Indian-food restaurant just before an explosion destroys it and all of its lingering diners. Tabulating the myriad “what-ifs” in the course of the day and in their lives and in their parents’ lives that saved them from doom obsesses the husband and keeps the reader on pins and needles. Built into the story are a dozen tense anecdotes about seemingly impossible coincidences and/or strokes of luck. The question is how one goes about beating chance.
That explosion turns out to be a gas accident, not terrorism, but ideology does play roles in a couple of other yarns.
“Fat Chance” looks at what might happen after UK government-imposed restrictions on personal choices devolve from abortion to smoking to obesity and the Weight Police roam the streets applying summary injustice.

In “Blues in the Night”, the most creatively conceived and most powerful story in the collection, almost the entire population of a small American town is wiped out, and it’s no accident. Again, there is the distrust in government as an undercurrent, and here the central character, Ripley Winkle, advises against oversleeping.
In “Killing with Kindness”, a foreign good Samaritan picks up a destitute couple on a road in Kenya and ferries them to their destination, only to discover too late that they’ve inadvertently left all their worldly belongings in his backseat. Years later and an ocean away, he finds himself in the same awful situation.
Another politically shaded tale is “Prisoners of Conscience”, in which a moneyed vigilante organisation makes up for society’s failure to punish the wealthy and powerful who misbehave. Villains very much resembling Pinochet, OJ Simpson and others are spirited aboard a ship and confined to ghastly lower berths, never to see land again.
The book is certainly not without humour. “The Nightingale and Rose (Oscar Wilde’s Local?)” doesn’t feature the celebrated English purveyor of wit so much as a match for his ingenious wordplay. This is a fairytale built on something akin to Cockney rhyming slang.
Whittaker has incorporated puzzles into his writing before and his challenge this time, particularly for anyone unused to that urban patois, is to figure out, for example, that “a Rob Roy and a Cadbury Swirl” means “boy and girl”. (It gets easier. One amused character “Steffi Graffed outright”.)
“Character Building” is pure delight, the author having a jaunty afternoon inventing a fantasy peopled entirely by different typographical fonts. Choices in life needn’t always be so harrowing.
“Grey Amber” is a mild tragicomedy about a struggling couple who believe their fortune has turned with the discovery of a huge shard of valuable ambergris washed up on a beach – except that it’s not, and they turn out destined never to find such a treasure.
An intricately interlocking meditation about various strangers, “Short Cuts” explains why it’s not always advisable to take them. “Spanner” is simultaneously hilarious and horrifying in explaining that, on the contrary, there’s danger in being too careful, or at least too organised.
In “What’s Up Doc”, a Conan Doyle fanatic turns into Sherlock Holmes, who for good reason finds it far too easy to solve crimes. There’s a prize in the pudding here too – a lovely little anagram.
Setting aside the giggles and guesswork, Whittaker is supreme at the pensive essay on life’s setbacks and the symbols and meanings deeper within.
“Two Men in a Boat” postulates that brotherly love shouldn’t be shared around. In “Bus Shelter”, the world seems suffused in mediocrity except for a terrible memory haunting a mum.
 “Skin Deep” is a lovely little mystery that unfolds like a blossoming flower, about a Parisian’s affections for a woman disfigured in an accident. How she got that way is interesting. How they come to meet and why they stop is fascinating.
“Ophelia in Orange” takes us on vacation to Spain with a trio of hen-pals, but all goes dark with the swiftest of boozy paddles in the sea, save for the bright tangerine one-piece worn by the pal who becomes the mystery woman of the title, famously salvaged from the Seine in an eternal sleep.
“Baron” is another standout. A man disinterested in his own mundane life and dreary acquaintances but fond of socialising with strangers while on holiday wins the lottery and buys himself a permanent place in the sky, growing steadily healthier and seemingly younger – god-like, one supposes.
The architecture metaphor notwithstanding, “The Colours We Choose” might also be compared to walking through a garden abloom with many, multihued varieties. Some delight, some soothe, some bring you to your knees.

The Colours We Choose
By Deryck Whittaker
Published by Matador, 2018
Available at Kinokuniya Books, Bt446