Access Tales From The Mall Edited By Ewan Morrison Accessible As Digital

something I would normally pick up, but I studied it in a class while in Scotland, Pretty great and strange! stories inside! Its just what it says in the title a mixture of true and fictional stories related to shopping malls plus interesting factual information about the development, design and operational aspects of malls.


No escapism here then but I certainly did enjoy it, Some of the true tales document some really bizarre behaviour of the public and employees when theyre in a shopping mall quite amazing,

However, the best is found in the fictional short stories, some of which are truly superb, The first is a comical sequence of events centring on the choice of a shopping mall as a neutral, safe place for a divorced father for the weekly contact with his children without mum.
The last is an epic journey of a guy drifting through life, loves, politics and his employment in retail and it parallels the development of shopping centres and our equivocal relationship with them.
sounds dire when I say it like that but it works really well,

Many of the stories focus on the downside of these retail giants like the degradation of nearby town centres and environment, the alienation of mall employees, the anonymity of the individual in the mall and the car parksand the general inability of many people to control their own lives.


Recurring themes include globalisation, the impact of branding, the power in the hands of large corporations and the general helplessness of individuals,



Like every collection of stories there will be some you will like more than others but it certainly provokes thought and provides entertainment,

I wouldnt say to anyone “You must read this!” but if you like the sound of the mix provided here and you enjoy a bit of literary fiction, then you will not be disappointed with this collection.

Tales from the Mall is a critique of consumer culture, The nonfiction sections and anecdotes are interesting enough but it is the short stories that really make it, They demonstrate such a great understanding of people's motivations, hang ups, discontentment and desires, that you will definately find yourself in at least one of them, I discovered lots of new things on my drive along Routelast year, The most enduring image was the social devastation caused by rerouting of the highway whole towns that had become abandoned, It was unsettling to think of the communities that had been starved to extinction, of local histories lost, It was all too easy to imagine the despair of business owners struggling to leave a legacy for their children,

Ewan Morrison speaks of a similar phenomenon in Tales of the Mall, . . of a decay that infects local communities when a mall opens up nearby, Of the corporations that construct megashopping facilities on the edges of towns and beyond facilities that deliberately and ruthlessly suck traffic away from local businesses, Of the changes to social fabric that result,

He also tells of the next phase of the decay after strangling the local opposition, malls themselves are prone to being strangled, Maybe it's a bigger/better/newer mall that takes the business away, or maybe it's the general loss of market share to internet shopping, Either way, the result is the same,

Given the magnitude of this issue, I found Tales of the Mall to be a little underwhelming, Maybe its' because the scale of megamall described in the book is foreign to my experience, There are definitely shopping malls in Australia, but they are a completely different beast to those I have seen in the US, I could empathise with the issues, but only to a limited extent,

The book is presented in an unusual format, Standard nonfiction chapters are interspersed with semifictionalised personal accounts and fully fictionalised short stories, Some of these are absolutely brilliant, but I don't think it worked as a complete package, It was the literary equivalent of a piece of art made by flicking paint haphazardly onto a canvas, with no order or purpose, Morrison may have put a lot of effort into how one chapter led into the next, but I couldn't see it, I'm not sure that I, as a reader, was taken on a journey,

I also think that the book suffered from a general lack of purpose, I thought some of the semifictionalised accounts made for great reading as standalone pieces, but that most of them were entirely redundant, as were a few of the factoid nonfiction chapters.
Funnily enough, I tended to have a better understanding and appreciation of the role of the true fiction short stories they were a varied bunch, A few were impenetrable, but most of them contained fairly obvious allegories that presented information about malls in a different way,

My recommendation is to avoid trying to read this book from cover to cover, Open up to a random page and start reading, If it bores you, just move to a different page until you find one of the many nuggets that are hidden within, I could have easily given some of the Tales from the Mallstars, but as a total package it only getsfrom me, Ive been meaning to read sitelinkThe Arcades Project for years and have a particular love for fiction set in the weird, psychologically oppressive space of shopping malls: sitelinkMaul, sitelinkDays, sitelinkKingdom Come, sitelinkYarn.
Tales from the Mall is a combination of the two, It includes short stories involving shopping centres, as well as true anecdotes and a potted history of the concept, I thought this combination of fact and fiction worked well, although I preferred the facts to the fictions, It all added up to a thoughtprovoking analysis of shopping malls and how we interact with them, While I lived in Cambridge, I went into a shopping centre nearly every other day, as the Central Library was in there, I became accustomed to screening out all the surrounding shops when I made a beeline for the sanctuary of the library, Now and again, though, I would look around the bright, shiny space and think about how strange it was, Especially when a pigeon had somehow become trapped in the grass roof, providing a surreal contrast to all the flimsy, transient architecture,

Malls are temples dedicated to consumerism, designed around the imperative to promote shopping, Morrisons book reminded me that they never have clocks: you are supposed to lose track of time, get lost in the haze of purchasing, The book also emphasises that malls are designed for individual shopping units rather than social creatures, so the interactions that occur are generally despite rather than because of the environment.
Its an appealing examination of this particular feature of late capitalism, now in decline as online shopping rises, and how squalid, inhumane, and depressing malls can be, There were some cracking good stories in this book and I thought that the nonfiction sections, in particular, stood out in terms of sheer quality, However, there were also some simply dire stories as well as a fair few completely forgettable ones,

It was very much a mixed bag, and while I'm glad I read it, I can't say it's one I'd bother revisiting, A difficult book to pigeon hole, There is a mixture of facts about Malls, interspersed with some short stories, One or two of the stories were phenomenally brilliant, actually, Highly recommended. Funny, perceptive, angry, postapocalyptic: Tales from the Mall pushes literature to its limits and comes out singing, Morrison mixes up angry but erudite sociological essays about the history of the mall with short stories about lives touched by mall culture, The essays are polemics, in the style of Owen Hatherley's 'Welcome to the New Ruins of Great Britain' or Naomi Klein's 'No Logo', but they're also informative and terrifying.
The short stories are gems particularly the triumphant granny who is determined to eat her sandwiches in the mall, and ends up chasing away from security guards in a mobility scooter.
When so much English fiction is middlebrow, derivative and obsessed with Henry VIII, Scottish literature is the one to watch for energy, bite and integrity, I really wanted to like this, but it lurched from being really good, to not great

full review here

sitelink blogspot. co. u Kinda weird but I like it, A new, hybrid kind of literature that navigates a mix of factual history, anecdotes and urban legend in order to scrutinise a space we're all familiar with, and expose the glossedover negative impacts it has on cities.
Just a pure fantastic read, Couldn't put it down.
A fantastic look into the history,style and general look at Mall's worldwide!,