Are These Meant to be Urban Noir?

Picked up Barrie Sherwood's 'The Angel Tiger and Other Stories' (2019) because I thought the title is cute. I didn’t quite understand the 13 short stories. I didn’t know if they’re supposed to be urban noir or the stories are deliberately vague. Perhaps I’m obtuse, but I really didn’t get many of them. It was like, ‘Huh? Then what?’ The endings felt abrupt, and it seems to be the narrative style.

The book opened with 'Croissant', a little tale of airport frustrations in a unnamed city where even French bakeries don't sell croissants anymore, and Elaine simply wants a damn croissant at the airport. They have muffnuts, bagels and such. But no croissants. The staff at the bakeries viewed Elaine as aggressive and wanted to call airport security on her. She finally found a bakery that does sell it, but it is known as 'Flaky French Roll'. She was schooled by the barista and server in the history of croissants (known as 'kipferl' in Austria) which resulted in this world not having anymore bread named 'croissant'. There were pilgrims and the suggestion of political correctness taken to the extreme. The story left me rather confused.

"Oh dear god," she muttered. "Well what about hot cross buns? Do you not make those either?" 

The man freed his thumbs and leaned across the counter as if to impart a secret. "Not Cross Buns. We make Not Cross Buns. You know, with a smiley face instead of a cross? No? Well it's there in the sales. People of all faiths buy more Not Cross than Hot Cross. Seriously, what do you want decorating your breakfast, a happy face or an instrument of torture?"

The eponymous story was the second story in the collection. It left me even more confused as to the insidious primal nature of cat and human. 'The Angel Tiger' refers to Geoffrey, a house cat who moved from an apartment to a house with a back garden that leads into the MacRitchie Reservoir. His owners let him out in the mornings to wander in the forest, and he returns in the afternoon for the night. He has been returning with a dead bird or two or three. Clean kills. No blood, no clear bites. It feels as though Geoffrey is moving on from being a tame house cat into a tiger skilled at hunting prey. And then for weird reason, he didn't return with any one day. His female human then went bonkers, went to the pet shop to buy birds to kill them, just to prove to her husband that their cat is some killer, and for as far as I can grasp, a random concept of entertainment and superstition.

The cat and us. This flurry of... activity. I wondered if it had even occurred to Joshua to see a parallel. Probably not. Maybe it was just me. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. A childish fascination with other kinds of continuity. I tried to dismiss it, the idea that they were related, but if they were linked, and the cat couldn't maintain the pattern, where would that leave us? Back where we'd been before, heading towards one of those stale marriages you read about in magazines at the hairdresser.  

We'd had some tests done recently at Raffles Hospital, but they were inconclusive. That's what the very well-paid doctor told us. So we uttered lots of reassuring things to one another, though we'd yet to get to the point at which either of us said: What matters is that we love each other. Because neither of us was quite sure if that were true. If he knew I would never get pregnant, would he stay? If the fault were his, would I? Neither of us was ready to pitch us against dream of family.

I was curious about a story since Epigram Books printed one rectification with a page reference to the hard copy,

Erratum p. 87: “She worked at Bagus w for a time.” should read as “She worked at Bagus Guesthouse for a time.”

Found the phrase in ‘The Cone Snail’. Those pretty shells washed up on the beach? Well they used to belong to cone snails, and we all know cone snails are predatory and venomous, and belong to one of the deadliest creatures of shallow water. Try not to get stung by one. However, this is a disturbingly well-written story, one that stays and unsettles you. It uses the stereotype of a foreign woman sexually preying on a local boy on an island resort. We don’t know how old the boy is, but it doesn’t take away the unsettling vibes of this story. Miss Beth is the American ‘scientist’ who’s collecting cone snails and their venom to sell to other scientists and pharmaceutical companies to make anti-venom. Andra is the young local boy contracted for the week to help her retrieve the cone snails. On the last day when Miss Beth leaves for the airport, he found her the biggest one as a gift. He gave her a dead snail. The irony.

She held it up in the sunlight. “Conus textile,” she said. “But blue. Andra, help me understand here... Why didn’t you give it to me alive?” 

“No experiments for this one,” he said. “Too valuable.” 

Lakhi Uncle made a show of checking his watch. “Miss Beth, I think we should be leaving.” He opened the rear door of the Crown. 

“This one’s not for milking,” Andra said. “Or selling. There’s bubble-wrap, and a soft cloth. You can polish it, keep it shining.” 

Beth stared at the shell in her hands. “You stupid boy,” she said. “You beautiful, stupid boy.”