In each story of this collection, events make the characters understand that their world is not as it seemed.
In Hidden, the discovery of an affair between her father and aunt is only the start of finding hidden secrets for Hazel.
What it Means to Be Empty-Handed is narrated by a fourteen-year-old daughter of an alcoholic. Her denial and elaborate imagination starts to disintegrate when she lies to the wrong person.
In Crashing, a middle-aged woman lives a life of servitude until she hits teenage boy with her car.
A thirty-year-old murder takes its toll on the victim's family in Walking A Country Road.
The stories are set in Boston and Ireland.
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[IN THE CLASSROOM, the children's voices were often lost amidst the high pitched drills of the quarry COMMUNION]***
(Fomite, 25 November 2019, 215 pages, ebook, copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed)
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I was impressed with the quality of the stories in this collection. The stories are vastly different in scope, style and structure. There are no two stories alike. Most story collections have at least one or two that don't work. I cannot fault a single story in Were We Awake. I loved every story. Walking a Country Road is the stand-out story in the collection. It's one of the best stories I've read in a long time. I also loved Cold Spell and Green Balloons. What impressed me is that the stories start off seeming to be quite innocent and gradually get much darker in tone.