This is a powerful
collection of short stories.
Set in Caerphilly,
location is the thread that runs through them, small town tales, a
place with a strong sense of itself but probably aware that the past
was better than the future.
These are punchy
stories – the characters are really well written, in the space of a
couple of dozen pages you have fully invested in them as people.
There is a theme of mental illness, depression and anxiety, which is
maybe “on trend” for 2020, but as a collection published in 2015
represents a prophetic voice.
In some cases these
issues felt a little close to home – I got the book at the end of
2017 and have read the stories every few months – they are powerful
and therefore I don’t think this is a book to sit down and read
cover to cover, you need time to let them settle and process before
reading the next one.
The final story is a
bit of a sci-fi, but like most of the best sci-fi it speaks to a
completely contemporary issue – in this case the fact that we spend
so much time on social media we fail to engage with the real world
around us.
I will probably
re-read this, which is the highest praise I can give, there are very
few books I actually ever go back to…
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