That Guy What Kill Topsy: With sixteen more stories, including the novella "I ♥ Rhinos"

by Peter Wood Cotterill

This intriguing collection of the author's stories includes the novella "I ❤ Rhinos" ("cos they keep on charging!"), which is about a very mixed group of people attending what is alleged to be "a marketing opportunity meeting." Short stories span locations from Zimbabwe to England. The themes range from the successes of an entrepreneurial woman, to the memories of a victim of a war-time bomb, to "The Trouble with Uncle George," as well as the title story about what happened to "That Guy What Kill Topsy." The collection features twenty-five main characters in at least seventeen different settings set during the past seventy years. Peter Wood Cotterill grew up in Kent during wartime England. He resided in Essex, East London, Lincolnshire, and West Suffolk before emigrating to Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, where he lived for twelve years before returning to the UK. For the past forty-two years, he has lived in the same house in rural Hampshire that was built in 1642. Now retired, he worked in the financial industry and helped his wife run an education charity. This is his second book.

218 pages, Paperback

Published March 28, 2019

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book jumps from present tense to past tense innumerable times, sometimes even within a single sentence: "Lester glances at him, ready to say hello, but Tommy wouldn't look up" (p. 6). Because of the multitude of errors, I DNF'd this book. I highly recommend that the author submit the manuscript to an editor.

[Clarissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

That Guy What Kill Topsy is a collection of seventeen short stories and one novella by Peter Wood Cotterill. All the stories have different plots, but most revolve around themes of death and grieving, social class, and reflections on the past. The novella is a particularly interesting story of strangers who attend a multi-level marketing party where everything devolves into a commentary on class, race, and morals.

The stories are all enjoyable enough to read and there are very few editing errors. Each short story has different lengths and elements which contribute to its entertaining quality. My favorite story was the novella, I Love Rhinos, which begins with a feeling similar to Waiting for Gadot, flows into something like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe, and finishes with a flourish all its own.

While the stories are all enjoyable, their endings are all sudden and often leave me asking myself “what was the point of this?” Even after finishing my favorite story, the sudden appearance of the end left me feeling jarred. Perhaps the quality of the endings suffers from the length of the stories, or the author created interesting plots but struggle with how to wrap them up. Whatever the reason, most of the stories left me feeling abandoned and wishing for a lot more than was offered.

I give this book 2 out of 4 stars. While I love a good book of short stories, this collection felt disjointed. The writing itself is not terrible and the plots are mostly well thought out. The endings are difficult to get past and I can not give high marks to a book that left me questioning the purpose of the story or asking myself if this was a waste of time. Most of the stories focus on middle age, white, heterosexual, cis men who are struggling with their disappointing lives. As a reader, I find myself struggling to care about these characters and their issues- particularly when these characters are reminiscing on their teens as a colonizer as in the story, I Was a Teenage Colonial Lackey.

There are probably better collections of short stories in the world, but if someone is looking for a collection of stories to read before bed or during their commute, this might be a good item for them. Because of the colloquial writing, I do not think this would be a good collection of short stories for someone looking to learn English.