A Spell in Winter

The short stories in this assured first collection range in place and time: from a young man's uncertain return to the rural world of his childhood at the end of the First World War (In the Merry Month of May), to a contemporary London pub meeting about the recovery of a debt (Getting It Sorted); from the world of knocker-boys and antiques runners in eighties Brighton (The Bibliophiles), to a Scottish farmer's romantic decision during a day's hedging (The Hechle). But what they have in common is the same assured mastery of language and of ordinary speech, and the same powerful evocation of place and time. These are stories about sudden moments of change in ordinary people's lives; moments of hope and struggle and transformation. They are also narratives which deftly explore the hidden intricacies of the human heart: tales of unconventional love and illicit love, tales of uxorious love and infidelity, of love triangles and of long-lost love. The stories gathered here share a common sensibility, too: one which seeks to uncover the profound within the minutiae of everyday life and work, and which reveals with insight and compassion the tightrope we all walk between the debilitating threat of loss and the hope which sustains us...