A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant labourers sit by a lake, talking about shovels and sex, while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war.
These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do.
Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.
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[She stood by the window and said, those trees are turning that beautiful colour again (THAT COLOUR)] ***(Bloomsbury, 2 February 2012, hardback, 262 pages, borrowed from my library)
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It's been a long time, far too long since I read a collection of short stories. It was a pleasure to read this one. Like his novels, these stories have the author's trademark sparseness yet are filled with well-drawn characters and vivid, rich detail that made them a pleasure to read. In Winter the Sky is my favourite story in the collection. It is, quite frankly, jaw-dropping and stunning. Other stories I particularly enjoyed were We Were Just Driving Around, Which Reminded Her, Later, Years of This, Now and I Remember There Was a Hill. This is a great collection of short stories. I had a great time reading them.
