Family Values

About the Book

This volume is put together from stories I have written over the last fifteen years. It comprises eleven pieces, varying in length from a two-page sketch to a novella, and in mood from tragedy to farce. The novella is the title story, Family Values, which deals with a boy genius who decides to conduct an anthropological study of his parents in their suburban home. As he says, ‘I approached the great mystery of my parents’ motivation. They were as strange to me as any Bushmen; and yet I faced them every day. What made them tick? The question irritated me, and the more I scratched at the place, the worse it itched!’ The Mirror of Eternity is a more sinister story, concerning the quest for eternal life of a group of Cambridge students and its aftermath. Mona Lisa is the story of a Parisian porno model who decides she wants to be immortalised in a painting, and of the painter who duly falls in love with her. Approximato tells of Pantalon, who has made an inexhaustible music box, which never repeats itself, and which some say is worked by spirits. In Cat and Mouse, Maud, a Canadian woman who has gone to Italy in search of her long-lost brother, ends up taking over his life—and his ex-girlfriend doesn't like it. Honza, the shortest piece in the collection, deals with a brief encounter between a tourist and a thief on a Prague tram. Footsteps of the Ninja is the story of Paula Yin, ‘the kissable kick boxer’, who fronts the Sony Celebrity Pro-Am Ninja Golf Challenge Trophy for Microsoft Cable, and gets caught up in a gang war in Madagascar, but manages to win through on screen in spite of everything. A Little Death is the everyday story of an old man who dies in an intensive care unit. A Bad Day for the General is about General van Doom’s attempts to take over the world with an army of genetically engineered chimpanzee clones: but he has reckoned without the Laughing Boy computer virus. In The Hamburger Monkeys, Professor Petersen, a Scandinavian cultural historian who has a MacArthur Foundation grant to visit Princeton, gets taken to the zoo. And finally, in Soul Music: the tale of the five-eyed demon, a deluded young man tries to conjure up a love goddess in the broken-down castle he has acquired in Transylvania: and inadvertently finds himself with a demon in the basement that he doesn’t have any idea what to do about.

Here is a passage from one of the stories: The Mirror of Eternity

‘There are one or two pieces I have some sort of attachment to,’ he admitted. ‘But I think really it is because there is no-one I can imagine who would derive as much pleasure from them as myself. Well...’ He looked up and smiled as a thought struck him. ‘Let me show you the sort of thing. Here.’ He stood up and walked across the tiles to a dark chest of drawers and slid open the top drawer. He carefully extracted a plain cardboard box and brought it to the table. With deft and somehow affectionate fingers he opened the box and laid aside some layers of tissue paper to reveal a small mechanical bird. It was made of brass, with some coloured glass beads for eyes, and it stood on an enamelled twig. He lifted it out of the box and showed it to me. Out of the box you could see that it was dented and damaged. He turned it over. One of the eyes was cracked.

‘There,’ he said. ‘One of my treasures. There is a story that goes with it, you see. Nothing else. No gold or jewels. And there would be no way of proving that the story was even true. But you see I know that the story is true. There is no other possible explanation.’ He gazed at his toy bird with an expression of wonder. After I while I picked up my tea and sipped at it in a meaning sort of way. ‘Oh, yes, forgive me. The story.’

‘I suppose I am a little curious.’

‘Naturally. Well, as you see it is a nightingale. It belonged to a certain pasha, who lived some two hundred and fifty years ago, on the shores of the Sea of Marmara. He was sitting on his veranda one evening, composing

About the Author

The British writer Christopher Lord is the author of The Book of Amuwapi (Twisted Spoon Press, 2000) and Politics (Charles University Press, 1999). He is also active as an editor, recent work including Central Europe – Core or Periphery? (Copenhagen Business School Press, 2000) and Parallel Cultures (Ashgate, 2001 – forthcoming). Currently teaching political theory in Prague, and editing a journal of international relations for the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he is also a playwright (Danse Macabre, Three Women of Spain) and a composer. He is an internationally syndicated columnist, and has appeared on TV and radio in a number of countries.