Robert Day's Reviews > England and Other Stories

Took me blooming ages to read this slim volume containing twenty-five slim stories.

And when I say stories, I really mean twenty-five instances of different characters (mostly a man in his fifties) relating thoughts about some event or object that they have encounters.

Man thinks while someone breaks the news to him that he has a brain tumour. Man thinks when he comes across a car in a ditch. Man thinks as he tells the history of his ethnic origins to a patient. Man thinks as he drives another man's wife somewhere. Man thinks and thinks and thinks.

Each character thinks different things, but all in the same sort of style. It reminds me of the way I assume that people thought in the 1950s. Kind of like an old fashioned way of thinking from a generation before mine. Even the stories set in the twenty-first century seem somehow to be set in the nineteen-fifties. It's something to do with the tone, I think.

And it's not that these characters aren't interesting in the way that they think, it's just that it's all a bit samey-samey. I was glad to finish the book.

Next up, in June, I'll be reading a set of Jo Nesbo books. Stories of the exploits of some detective or other that the wife raves about. I'll enjoy them, but ultimately I'll probably get bored with the sameness. So, perhaps it's just my nature to get bored. Let's see.

Read this if you're not about the action, but more about the thoughts behind the action. Avoid it if you like variety in a collection of short stories.