Smart Ovens For Lonely People by Elizabeth Tan
“I do not mean to make it sound like Eighteen Bells is an unhappy place. I think it is more accurate to say that more people are simply unhappy – here and everywhere – and don’t actually realise it.”
The first short story collection by Australian author Elizabeth Tan, Smart Ovens for Lonely People (2020), draws together a few of her previously published pieces (from the likes of Kill Your Darlings, Overland, and Seizure) with a mix of new work.
Across the twenty stories, Tan takes us on a somewhat tumultuous journey across a variety of imagined and twisted realities. The collection opens with “Night of the Fish,” a tightly packed piece of flash fiction. In under two pages, the liveliness of children is juxtaposed with their local rundown playground finding its own feet (literally) and the way this liveliness is quickly covered up and smoothed over by the adults in their lives. It’s a strange and slightly unsettling piece, doing what all good flash fiction does - making us feel the emotion between the lines.
The titular story was my stand-out favourite across the collection. A woman experiencing the grief of a failed relationship and suicide attempt is entered into the Smart Oven Program. The program assigns individuals a futuristic oven that cooks them meals, offers neutral advice, and plays supposedly appropriate music to match their clients’ emotional state. It’s a richly imagined piece, with the protagonist Shu being given a cat-shaped oven called Neko. It’s a beautiful nod to the desperate loneliness we go through when navigating matters of a broken heart, and the uncomfortable blindness of those around us who are unsure of how to handle our grief:
“Let me be clear though: my Neko Oven was not at all like those gauche models featured in the commercials, the ones in which sexily voiced ovens whisper/bake sweet nothings forced single people. Neko Oven was quite classy actually. She (for Neko Oven was programmed with a female voice) was fond of kindly stating the limits of her responsibilities.”
Grief is a theme that crops up a few times. “Excision in F-Sharp Minor” was another favourite of mine and it details the experimental excision of people’s feelings or emotions into inanimate objects. Our narrator, Nora, has the grief from losing her partner excised and transferred to a CD. The grief becomes a song that compels the listener to feel a deep and discomforting sadness. The structure of this story is reversed, starting at the end and working its way backwards, and it’s done impressively well.
Tan is an exceptionally masterful writer in the prose she pulls together - but for stories I did enjoy, there were quite a few I didn’t. Some pieces felt like blankets, covering up for the real story Tan might have liked to write. Some felt like they were being absurd simply for the sake of absurdity. “Ron Swanson’s Stencilled ‘Stache” is an example of the latter. The story begins with a documentary on an ASMR competition, and our protagonist speaks random mantras over and over again as her ASMR act. One of these is “Ron Swanson’s stencilled ‘stache” and she not only wins the competition but goes on to secure worldwide fame with her addictive mantra. So far so good, but the story then veers wildly off course pursuing a narrative that is similar to the previous story “Mounting Sexual Tension Between Two Long Time Friends: Tom Knows that Ant is a Spy But Ant Doesn’t.” This would have been fine but no connection is made between the stories so it felt a little repetitive and unnecessary. “Happy Smiling Underwear Girls Party” also seemed to miss the mark: an attempt at commentary on consumerist female identity, that ultimately felt like a stab at a specific set of women.
“Quirky” is a word I have seen crop up multiple times while reading about this book, which seems to be an easy word to apply here. The collection teeters on the edge of something but doesn’t seem to fully dive right in. For me, it felt as though Tan was walking on eggshells, saying the absurd but deliberately steering away from the hidden meaning and deeper epiphany the stories could really lead to. Or indeed, the deeper social commentary Tan herself wanted to share but, for whatever reason, didn’t feel she could.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under @wordswithelaine.
