What a little gem this collection of short stories is. Short stories are notoriously hard to get published in the mainstream and many writers resort to self-publishing them, as Mary Ann Lamont has done here. Nonetheless, these stories are as well-written as any work taken on by a publisher. The 11 stories cover an engaging cast of characters and a gamut of human situations. This understanding of human frailty is one of the book’s many strengths. It is handled with subtlety and understatement, in such a way as to bring the reader to that very satisfying state of ‘…ah-ha, that’s exactly right in the circumstances’. When the older man in the title story explains why he is so attentive to his sick wife, the narrator thinks: “For a moment something wavered, his halo perhaps in my mind.”
Evocation of time and place is also a strong point in Mary Ann Lamont’s writing. The settings are varied – a hospital ward, a strawberry garden, an isolated camping holiday, a camera club trip into the countryside – and all superbly drawn. A description of a hot day in the opening story Nicola’s Swim is palpably enervating.
Each story is well-structured, and that’s no simple task – sometimes short stories can run away with themselves, but these are nicely contained with nothing out-of-place.
A great holiday read, or Christmas gift.
