| | Five Green Bananas |  | Authors: Alice Anderson, Wendy Christopher, Kate Fuscoe, T. W. Garland, Claire Hardiman, Alanna Irving, James Johnson, Karen Lancaster, Glynnis Morgan, Ann Newbegin
Publisher: Scriblist Ltd
Category: Book
Buy New: £9.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1694207
Media: Paperback
Pages: 262
ISBN: 0955872502
EAN: 9780955872501
ASIN: 0955872502
Publication Date: April 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Watching Fruit July 23, 2008
"It's another special secret game!" Dan says. "Daddy needs to go for a drive, and it'll be very exciting. Come on." He is getting my green coat out of the cupboard and putting my arms into it-
An extract from The Witness, the first green banana. And for me the best of the bunch as The Witness dons his green coat and takes us on a journey similar to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
I like the multiple author approach used in these short stories and I enjoyed seeing the baton hand over places. Some were seamless, others a bit bumpy! But on the whole it was fun to read because of this.
However these five stories are indeed green banana's in the sense that the author's talents are raw.
One of the drawbacks today is that few authors get to learn their trade outside of their own four walls. They have to be up and running, polished and a finished product before they stand any chance of getting published.
In that I think we have lost something.
Five Green bananas as a book is okay and on the whole I enjoyed reading it. It wasn't a brilliant "must read" book or one with beautifully constructed prose or a contemporary comment giving us insight into our times and mankind. But what it is, is a testing ground out there in the scary place called the public arena that counters the "Instant Bestseller, Classic" culture.
To compare it with the music industry: How many great classic albums are produced by a band's first album? A few, but not many.
So Five Green Bananas: A place to watch authors as they cut their teeth, make mistakes, gain confidence and learn together how to find the shape of a story.
What comes through is a heart for writing and a love for story. Just because the fruit isn't ripe yet doesn't devalue this. That's the point, that's why I like it.
 Everybody's a winner June 22, 2008
My interest in this collection of short stories was piqued long before I knew what the stories were about or whether they were any good. Knowing how interesting and illuminating Wikipedia entries and other such collaboratively written texts can be, I wondered whether the apparent virtues of collaborative writing would translate well beyond facts and into the realm of fiction. Would short stories whose chapters were written by different authors actually be coherent enough to move a plot and do it well? Would the quality of the writing be consistently good enough across chapters and stories to keep the interest of a discerning reader like me? Having read the stories (indeed, having read a couple of them two or three times for the sheer fun of it), I must say 'yes' in answer to both questions. I have been to the Scriblist.com website and I have read about how the stories came to be. And yet, in a very real sense, I don't know how they did it - how did they manage to produce such a fantastic collection of stories?
The competition and collaborative writing process seem to have honed the works of undoubtedly talented novice authors into a collection of thoroughly engaging reads. The stories range from the enjoyable (e.g. How do you solve a problem like Maria?) to the heartbreaking (The Witness) and the thoroughly sublime (The Kabul Case). They address themes across the board, from developmental disability to postcolonial racism to domestic violence to ageism, all in the most thought-provoking and stimulating of ways. By and large, they show expert development of plot and character and a surprising depth of voice. In reading them, I felt transported, moved. The Kabul Case was my favourite, not least because of its fast pace and complex plot, wrapped up with an absolutely exhilirating ending. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Hollywood had come looking for the film rights to that one.
The authors who contributed to each of the book's stories are already winners, having won rounds of online competition to get their chapters published. But I can't help feeling that the real winners here are we readers who get to enjoy these stories again and again. To lovers of short stories or those who are open to becoming them, I recommend Five Green Bananas. We should all look forward to future works by these talented authors and to the next Scriblist book.
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