Unthology 5

by Ashley Stokes (editor)

In the latest of the celebrated series, you find yourself surfacing, dazed in the waiting room. You read snatches of lines over the shoulders of raincoats. In the carriage you have glimpses and visions. At your destination you can hear space, see thunder, taste realization. You are running towards something, someone in the trees who holds out to you an understanding hand. Welcome to the wonderful and sometimes frightening world of Unthology 5.

Paperback

First published June 25, 2014

About the author

Ashley Stokes is the author of Gigantic (Unsung Stories, 2021), The Syllabus of Errors (Unthank Books, 2013) and Voice (TLC Press, 2019), and editor of the Unthology series and The End: Fifteen Endings to Fifteen Paintings (Unthank Books, 2016). His recent short fiction includes Subtemple in Black Static; The Validations in Nightscript, Black Slab in The Ghastling; Replacement Bus Service in Out of Darkness (edited by Dan Coxon, Unsung Stories), and Fade to Black in This is not a Horror Story (edited by JD Keown, Night Terror Novels). Other stories have appeared in Tales from the Shadow Booth Vol. 4, BFS Horizons, Bare Fiction, The Lonely Crowd, the Warwick Review, Storgy and more. He lives in the East of England where he’s a ghost and ghostwriter.


"Touching the Starfish is a very funny and accessible book. It is a fine first novel." Eastern Daily Press.

"Lovers of mitteleuropa period fiction, or of contemporary fiction, or – ideally – both, will love this book. It’s Joseph Roth meets Roberto Bolaño, and it is simply wonderful." David Rose on The Syllabus of Errors.

Reviews

[Jay Slayton-Joslin]

Another cracking entry into the Unthology series.

[Alan]

2 writers from my writing group in this: Garrie Fletcher and Charles Wilkinson, plus a 'virtual' friend and excellent writer Elizabeth Baines. Looking forward to reading..

A fine mix of voices and styles made this another excellent contribution to a great series of anthologies. Of course I liked my friends' stories best - Garrie's skilful portrait of an old war refugee, now living in accumulated rubbish, Charlie W.'s school-set tale of a weary headmaster near the end of his career, and Baines's sharp story of family fall out, coming to a head at a funeral. However there was much else to admire, Angela Readman's scary take on abduction from the child's pov, Mark Mayes's story of a man (a ghost?) who keeps appearing at odd times to a man feeling guilty about the child he abandoned in Germany when he was a soldier there. Both Sarah Bower's delicate 'Restoration' which took us inside the world of restoring paintings, and John Rutter's equally fine piece on visiting his in-laws for the last time were about the end of relationships, while Andrew Oldham's startling piece on a man turning to stone was poetic and raw. CS Mee imagined the end of the world as bringing about a return to the old skills of baking and family conversation rather than the usual panicky fuckfest. All in all a lively set of stories. Long may Unthology continue.