Breaker Breaker (for short) is a collection of 20 of Trevor Reeves' previously published stories; the first of which saw print in 1976. Trevor Reeves is probably best known as a poet and as editor of the on-line literary magazine Southern Ocean Review, but these stories show that he is also an accomplished writer of short fiction. 'These 20 stories span quite a range of themes and genres, from mainstream literary fiction through the corporate satire of The Sandbox' to the science fiction of 'The Return' and the thwarted romance of' Library Call', but they share a similarity of tone. The best word I can find for it is 'disillusioned': many of the protagonists are middle-aged people whose hopes have been downsized by the world, and those who begin their stories with hopes intact have often lost them by the end. In case this sounds too gloomy, the characters often lose their hopes in entertaining ways; and to be free of illusion is to have a clearer understanding of the world, to be sadder but wiser. People want things in these stories: often sex or drugs, sometimes respect, or just to be free of their troubles.. Often, the protagonists end up failing to acquire what they want and losing what they already have in the process. Okay, you may be saying, sounds like your standard Enzed depressing short stories - what's different here? Well, for one, the protagonists are adults: those staples of New Zealand short fiction, the child who sees but does not understand the troubles of adults, and the troubled but sensitive adolescent, are absent here. For another, class and work: rather than bright young urban things or lawyers tangled in lust, these characters are or have been workers: in the home, driving trucks, getting paid for sex, making grit, slaving for the corporation. Come to think of it, there are some lawyers, but their courtroom demeanour is less than exemplary. This emphasis on workers, and ex-workers who would like to be employed again, means that the reader finds out many interesting things while reading this book: about milling oyster shells, being an undercover COP, sailing across Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island. One of the things I like fiction to do is tell me things I don't already know about the world, and I found these details both fascinating in themselves and an excellent anchor for the fiction. In a few of the stories, such as 'The Return', the knowledge of the field involved seemed less sure, and the fiction therefore less convincing. A persistent theme of the collection is the effect on working people, and New Zealand society in general, of the new right 'reforms' of the 1980s and 1990s: the destruction of work, and lives, and the social fabric. It's often these reforms, and particularly the unemployment that resulted, that has caused or exacerbated the disillusionment of the protagonists: losing one's job at the behest of an economic theory is among the most disillusioning of experiences. I like the way that Trevor Reeves locates the lives of his characters in a social context - although they are most emphatically characters, not ciphers for a political viewpoint, and in their desire to get drunk, get stoned and have as much sex as possible they do not serve as templates of politically correct behaviour. His male and female characters have similar drives, but they are often expressed in different ways. Overall? I think this is a good book. It's grounded fairly solidly in the realist mode, but I like the way it escapes from it from time to time. The stories play as little scenarios of New Zealand life refracted through Trevor Reeves' world view: and it's a world view that has no time for corporate cant or the 21st-century equivalents of 'we are all one people'. Not a book that wears red socks or flies in tidy formation among other geese: I like that.

Trevor Reeves, Breaker Breaker and Other Stories (Square One Press). Reviewed by Corin Black in Glottis, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Regular readers of literature will know that when one is confronted with a small book from a little known press, one can often expect the worst. It's not an irony, or a surprise however, that Trevor Reeves' Breaker Breaker, is good - very good, even.

One of the guarantees of being published by Faber & Faber, or even VUP or AUP, is that the author in question will have undergone a rigorous schedule of publication in journals, followed by an exacting examination by the literati, and be deemed worthy. After this, fame, a mention in the Sunday paper, an interview on National Radio follow. I doubt Trevor Reeves will receive any of these perks, but his book is better than the kind of approval they would garner.

Reeves works; you can tell. These stories are crafted and patient. He struggles to tell the truth; he puts characters in difficult situations and lets their, well, 'character' ooze out; he is a toiler in the modest and decent kiwi way.

The best of our short story writers come from unassuming back grounds, with perhaps the luminous exception of Katherine Mansfield. Frank Sargeson toiled away in a shack, Janet Frame came from Oamaru, and Owen Marshall wrote from Timaru. Chad Taylor, my other favourite, comes from one or other of the semi-anonymous Auckland suburbs, even if he has adopted a fantastic, twisted sophistication.

Reeves is perhaps of a similar mould. He publishes his Southern Ocean Review regularly, without pretension, and the cover of his book shows the same unassumedness. The saying about books holds true here, and what is contained within is belied by that which lies without. I think, for the sake of completeness, I should, however, mention the typos, and the mis-bound pages, which crop up. now and then to remind you that this is the effort of a man who lacks a sub-editor.

The first of the stories, 'Breaker, Breaker' is only superficially about a truck driver. The nuts of it is in sex and murder, in a peculiarlarly small and grubby New Zealand way. The other stories follow suit, but this is not to demean or belittle them. It might be possible to poke fun at the style, which has no truck with flowery language or symbolism. The title story recounts the sexual, initiation of a teenager by his father, via the indifferent attentions of a truckdrivers' moll. Jenny, the moll, doesn't lack self-respect, but nevertheless becomes the accomplice in her own demise. It is the almost uncaring, brutal kiwi way that this takes place which is the subject of the story. This may not be the author's intention (even saying so. may offend him) but I think it's true, and wouldn't happen anywhere else. It is a story that leaves you curiously flat,-, and emotionless, like the knife on the dresser, like the boy in the cab of the truck.

Reeves draws out the consolations of life, sad and mean though they might be;'The Baby'ends with an unhappy woman contemplating a child, who, despite his origin, is her very own. This might not be enough, but it wrenched sympathy from this reviewer. This story has many delicate moments. Consider these sentences: "THERE, she would say to her friend Amy, half relishing the pain of it. Laughing her beautiful musical laugh and saying OH DEAR, in a descant, at the end of it.". The clumsy capitals convey the sadness, and it is exquisite.

Sometimes, he stretches the sentences a little too far, like in The Delivery. "Gee it's heavy-mind all those books, folders,, and papers on the floor-we'd better not scuff them around on the way out, or there'll be ,complaints.". This dialogue isn't natural: it disguises exposition as conversation. Another sentence in this story is miraculous: "Their mother was a remote person with very little brain who played croquet with great fanaticism". Bert, the main character, is fired for using the-wait for it-photocopier "without permission'. The reader's indignation is tempered with amusement, and it's this sort of complexity that Reeves delights in. The short story, through Kafka, Maupassant, O'Connor, Frame, and others is the domain of the perverse, and Reeves does not disappoint, in his plots, or his language.

Some of the stories are in the 'yarn' mode, reminiscent of, say, Barry Crump. These are alcohol or drug-fuelled escapades that use the device of putting people on a seemingly harmless escape, then turning up the drama. 'Captain Kettle' sets its protagonists adrift on a dinghy with a broken outboard, revealing their mortal vulnerability. 'The Secret' sends two boys on a journey that begins with an attempt to buy glue and takes them through a dope plantation into the clutches of some rather predatory drug dealers. These stories are both well handled, using the yarn to reveal the weaknesses and strengths of the characters.

The collection does have its fair share of misses. 'Library Story' is a predictable tale of love gone wrong that makes its punchline too obvious, while 'The Watsons' is a genealogy worked up into an uncompelling story.

It is to Reeves' credit that there is little "filler" in the book, most stories attempt something new.

Breaker Breaker is an excellent collection of stories: humourous, dark, indigenous, and satisfying.

Breaker Breaker & Other Stories - Trevor Reeves. Square One Press, New Zealand. NZ$24.95. Reviewed by David King in Buzzwords Magazine, UK.

Breaker Breaker & Other Stories is Trevor Reeves' first short fiction collection, although the twenty stories that comprise it are not new, most having been published in print or online magazines in the UK, USA, and Trevor's native New Zealand.

Trevor has been a serious writer since the early 1970s, when he published three books of his poetry and, as founder of Caveman Press, gave many writers their chance to appear in print. His name, as editor and publisher of the highly-regarded Southern Ocean Review, will be familiar to many of our readers.

My favourite stories are The Christmas Party and Day at the Beach, each involving sexual hiccups of one kind or another (what does that tell you about me?) but from the opening Breaker Breaker, a disturbing account of a truck driver and his problem son, right through to The Watsons, an amusing mini-fable of how a full-blooded Maori obtained an English surname, this is an eclectic selection, always highly readable but at the same time exposing the uncomfortable things that lie behind the lace curtains of society.

While Reeves' ultimate messages are international, their flavour is inevitably New Zealand but in my view this is a bonus. Many of these stories feature Maori characters and, due to Reeves' empathetic portrayal, I gained a great deal of insight about their lives that I probably would never have discovered otherwise.

Breaker Breaker & Other Stories is obtainable from Square One Press, PO Box 2143, Dunedin, New Zealand at NZ$ 24.95 or see website Southern Ocean Review