Whenever we hear that a collection of Oxbridge student writing has been published, we seem to expect a certain standard of brilliance. Perhaps this is because so much of the current literary establishment has migrated from Oxford and Cambridge – if it wasn’t Sylvia Plath’s poetry in the 1950s, or the writing of Philip Larkin or Ted Hughes, then it was Zadie Smith’s breakthrough short story in the 1997 Mays that stands as the beacon of what Oxbridge students can write.

I suppose it is because of this bar of excellence that I felt so largely underwhelmed by The Obsidian Poplar and Other Stories. Of the ten short stories, only two or three were truly decent pieces of work.

Stories like 'Tuesday', 'An Encounter' and 'The Obsidian Poplar', from which the publication gets its title, are injected with what could be set material from their writers' Tripos. There was A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Puck, the sleepy receptionist in 'Tuesday', and Arthurian legend with the drunkard called Tristan who by complete chance stumbles into the house of a girl called “Iz”, or Isolde as is soon made clear – just in case we hadn’t made the connection already. In these cases, however, the simple economy of the prose more or less compensated for the slap-in-the-face obvious referencing.

Laura O’Driscoll’s 'An Encounter', particularly, had moments that could have led to poignancy, but this was lost by the highly romanticised plot scenario: a handsome man stumbling into a girl’s house, innocently, late one night, only for them to feel a connection that might lead to a happy ever after.

Sadly, 'The Obsidian Poplar' itself has neither O’Driscoll’s prose nor Max Gallien’s relatively funny plot to detract from the over-sensationalised retelling of the rape of Persephone. It was a good idea, and one that, with better subtlety, could have made an interesting story. Yet here lines like, “Persephone, please… I’m not made for these dark chasms any more than you are! I need someone to share this life down here with…” or “…little did she know I was now more than just his daughter – I was the latest on his list of conquests…” abound. This a story that glorifies Stockholm syndrome but adds no more than superficial insight (“My kidnap had proved my liberation”). Maybe I scrutinise this story because it bears the publication’s name; usually a sign that it is the standout work, though I fear here it is because the titles of the other stories were far less interesting, such as Madeline Kerr’s 'Folks'. 

But Kerr’s short story of an Anabaptist family wedding in the rural mid-west proved far and away the best of the collection. Not only the plot, but the prose, too, felt as organic as the corn the Mennonites harvest each season. There is an engrossing obliviousness in the observations of the self-proclaimed spinster from whose perspective we read the narrative. Kerr asserts no protestations on the customs of this society, “…so I decide to forget about the time Warren told me I would be more Godly if I held my tongue in the company of men”, instead leaving the reader to pick up on the peculiar and profound moments of these people.

I think this is where Kerr proved the more skilled writer compared to others like L P Lee in her 'Reflections in a Mechanical Eye'. The latter, in which Lee rages against the impossible standards of South Korea’s beauty culture, is truly impassioned with an earnest conviction. Yet there is nothing of subtlety or nuance about it; the writing is on the wall in BLOCK CAPITALS and Lee stands next to it, pointing with both hands. This was why Kerr’s piece felt so refreshing. 

Fergus Morgan’s 'A Masterful Performance' felt like something that might have come out of the adolescence of Richard Yates. The story of a man so disillusioned by his job, he passes the time at work acting a different persona; it was almost something out of Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. I say almost, because certain contrived plot devices thwart its fluidity to the climax in which the protagonist metaphorically enters inside himself moments before being entirely subsumed by the persona he at first played for fun.

I feel Paddy Scopes's 'Aspects in the Flower Garden' would have been a more intricate title for the anthology, and indeed the story itself proved as promising as the title suggests. It marked the most inventive attempt at reshaping the short story through sub-headed narratives connected, fleetingly, by a small boy looking for the owner of a photograph he had found. The emotional intensity of the prose was an apt build-up to the emotional powerhouse of 'The Ballroom' by Alice Ahearn, a story on the inevitable consequences of age; a fine, if not obvious, note to finish on.

The Lightfall Agency, however, must be applauded in their aims to champion student writing in an ever more crowded industry. I just hope that in the next anthology we see more like Karr, Scopes and L P Lee.