My second collection of short stories of the year and my second Patrick Gale book as well. I was driven to buy and read this based upon my enjoyment of both of these factors, and that I think I should read more short stories in general.
Gale is very good at characters and making you care about them, so perhaps this is what lets this collection down. The stories are reasonable enough and well written, but I just found myself thinking 'and?' at the end of every one. Short stories to my mind should have some sort of twist, something Roald Dahl and Stephen King are very good at. Indeed, on several occasions whilst reading these I found myself wishing one of these had written it instead as they'd have done it more justice.
I'm not going to let this put me off short stories or Patrick Gale, but this was pretty disappointing.
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