Perfect Lives

by Polly Samson

In an English seaside town, lovers and children, young men and middle-aged women weave in and out of each other's lives and stories in this collection that is in turns rueful, knowing, witty, poignant, bashful, and bold. A mother is tormented by her daughter’s tattoo; another only pretends to love her baby. A wife stalks her husband and his new lover; a broken egg through a letterbox tells a story that will not go away; the cat thinks he knows best. Threaded throughout are longings for love and poignant disappointments, surprising pleasures and temptations. Some will fall but some, like the small boy at the circus who sees his babysitter fly past on a trapeze wearing little more than a blue bra and spangles, will retain their feeling of awe.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Novels, British Literature, Contemporary

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 11, 2010

About the author

Polly Samson is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories. Her most recent novel, A Theatre for Dreamers, reached number 2 in The Sunday Times bestsellers list and she has written introductions to new editions of Charmian Clift's Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus which will be published in April 2021.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

July 2011 update: I want to make it clear that although I mention below Charlie Gilmour's behaviour at the student protests last year, that I approve wholeheartedly of his actions (most of them) and was shocked and disgusted by the 16 month sentence given out by the judge last week. The state has done appalling 'violence' to the British education system and has no mandate to do so (I think every single person who voted LibDem was against the hike in tuition fees, indeed many who voted libdem did so entireley because they were opposed to them before the election, so the government has no majority in this case) and therefore violence (to property) is an entirely legitimate and justified response. In the normal course of events the things that he did would have merited a suspended sentence or perhaps community service. That would have been appropriate. So sorry if anyone thought I was having a dig at his actions below. All my sympathy goes to him and his mother, the author of this book.

******************************

I should hate this book, because it was reviewed in the Guardian the same day as mine was, we were next to each other. Both good-ish reviews, and my book is linked with this one on amazon (buy this with thatone for a discount thingie). So we should be about level in terms of sales and exposure you would think? No, I've got no amazon reviews and am about 400,000th on their sales list, Ms Samson has 25 reviews and is regularly top of the short stories listing. Why - well she's an attractive woman married to a rock star - David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. She wrote some of the lyrics for their last albums. I'm not, as you can see (an attractive woman, or man come to that). On her amazon promotional video she walks along the beach outside her large house and sits in a room that could probably fit my whole house in. Plus she's everywhere - in the Sunday Times she gets a prominent review with picture, then the next month she's chosen for books of the month (time for another picture), then shortly after she's in their (The Sunday Times) books of the year, again time for another picture (I take note of the byline, former Sunday Times journalist Polly..). OK, you think that'll be it. Then she's in the main paper . large picture, in an article about amazon reviews (her husband has started replying to a bad review). Then lo and behold if it isn't her son, or stepson I'm not sure who was pictured on all the front pages of papers as the student swinging from the flag at the Cenotaph diuring the student protests. Cue more pictures.

So, anyway, if I give this book a bad time you'll probably think it's sour grapes. But, of course, I won't let this affect me at all. After all, Ms Sansom can't help being a beautiful woman, any more than I can help being an ugly git.

I have to get over my aversion to characters called Celia Idlewild, and Angus and Ivan (no they’re not Scottish), Aurelia and Claudine and who live in massive houses by the sea and are visited by piano tuners or have Italian lovers called Massimo and second ‘caramel coloured.. sun baked houses in Castagnola’, a world of cashmere and champagne (as opposed to mine of bri-nylon and beer). It’s hard but I think I can do it.

..well, there were two stories I found unbearably twee: The Birthday Present, where a ‘lover’, addressed as you, moments together talked of etc, turns out to be a camera ( I know that's a spoiler but don't care), and 'Remote Control' which features a talking cat. These seemed to be beginner's stories, in theme/'plot' if not in execution. Also, some of the characters are a bit too similar throughout, some stories have implausibilities. However I would give my right arm to have written 'Morganna' (with some slight tweaking) or 'Ivan Knows' (as it is), well, OK, maybe my left arm. In Morganna a wife stalks her just left husband and his new lover. It's funny: when she goes on driving lessons with the narrator: Bang outside Mike’s flat and into a space either directly behind or in front of his car always seemed to Morganna to be the perfect place to practise parking. Also some poignant moments – she gets rid of his voice on the answer machine and then regrets it, later her husband has a crash on his (push)bike and forgets everything since he left his wife so supposes he is still with her, and she has to bathe him in hospital. Below, his scrotum bobbed slightly in the shallow water like giant figs, and there are further twists. A masterful story (apart from a weird shift in pov), but even better is 'Ivan Knows' which starts as a great account of childhood perceptions and misconceptions:

He was fast as a rocket on his yellow bike.. Everything coming at him like a set of new magic tricks. He could read, he could ride a bike, he could swim without armbands, soon he’d be able to fly

But then turns into something more sinister, and then changes back to a lighter mode.

Other stories too are very good - the opening 'The Egg', 'Barcarolle' (about that piano tuner I complained about earlier), 'The Rose Before the Vine', and the loose linking of them all works well.

Maybe four stars is too generous, but this book is certainly worth more than three (in my regime) because the book is rich in other-than-monetary ways, full of humour and insight and affection: all the characters seem cherished by the author, even the clumsy paedophile-y Uncle. The majority of stories are delightful, replete with well picked images (damsel flies are ‘disco dancers, dressed in blue sequins’; an earlobe is ‘tender as a new broad bean’), good, complex characters - on the whole - and subtle changes of tone and beautiful prose. I may be slightly in love.

PS: It was a week of Pollys as I listened non stop to Polly Harvey's Let England Shake. A very different take on England (this one about the country's bloody history: 'I saw soldiers fall/like lumps of meat'.) Still listening. Recommended for anyone with ears.

[Joanna Rakoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved, loved, LOVED this gorgeous, perfectly observed, often hilarious, just-as-often heartbreaking collection of stories.

[Aubrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not even finished with this book and i already want to read it again.

[David]

A quirky and erratic collection of semi-connected short stories. It's not a "story cycle". but neither are the stories wholly independent of each other. There is no apparent chronology and no single narrative, but each of these "perfect" and occasionally intersecting lives is far from perfect--a mood which unifies the otherwise unusual collection.

[Kaylee Poplawski · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Perfect Lives" by Polly Samson is a collection of 11 interlocked stories, all of which are captivated by the same theme. "Perfect Lives" is the second short story collection i've read and not alone was enthused, but I was left wanting to read more. Each story reveals the perfect lives of which cracks soon prevails, essentially leading to dismantled families on the ritzy side of a seaside town. One thing I loved about this series is the portrayal of events. Although on character might know another the reader is covert to the entwined secrets and pasts. I would recommend "Perfect Lives" to anyone who enjoys a collection of stories.

[Isabelle Giraud · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful collection of short stories linked by characters, even frocks, moving easily from one story to another. Polly Samson's prose is lyrical and visually vivid leaving imprints of her stories on her readers' memories as clear as photographs. Her characters are endearingly fragile and real and feel like old friends. If you are new to short stories, this is a great collection to start with.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved these interconnected stories about the highs and lows of life in a small seaside town. Nothing is as it seems, there is pathos and joy, the small dramas of lives being lived described beautifully, in language that awes you and moves you in equal measure. Loved, loved, loved. One of the best story collections I have read. Beautiful.

[Huda Al-Anbar · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing was ok, I just didn't feel the story.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Polly Samson's writing is amazing.
And my favourite story was the one about the Leica camera.

[Leslie Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eleven interconnected stories set in the bucolic English seaside town in which everyone is a little skewed and searching ...for love, belonging, pleasures, and more

Lately I've had a love affair with wry, enchanting short stories that bring to mind nature and our connection to it--and also the inner lives of deliciously flawed characters. PERFECT LIVES (Bloomsbury, 2010) by Polly Samson absolutely fits the bill. Her writing is keenly observed in the nuances of family life and also the small town feel of this enmeshed seaside community.

There's a broken egg dropped through a mail slot, a boy who glances his babysitter at a circus on a trapeze, a struggling postpartum mother, a piano tuner, some gorgeous architecture, and more. The stories meander and trail along in a fashion that is both exquisite and nuanced, and at times, I struggled to find the connections between them, but characters do resurface, and like a true-life village, 'bump' into one another time and time again. Samson's strength lies in details and observations. It made me want to be a voyeur on Evrika Street.

PERFECT LIVES may not be very long--my edition is 194 pages--but the prose is dense and the stories deep, leaving a residue. It's not the kind of book you read in a rush; take your time to savor, and perhaps re-read, looking for themes and motifs, because they are most certainly there.

I was reminded a bit by stories by Lucia Berlin A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN with a touch of Helen Phillips and a dash of Karen Russell.

For all my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com|Always with a Book

Special thanks to the author for this review copy. All thoughts are my own.

[Moneva Van-Vooren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story was intriguing enough to want to keep me looking for more, the second one was still another mosaic piece I enjoyed.... but sadly, as the story evolved, it also became more and more confusing as to who is who and how would they relate to each other. I tried to look for all potential connections, since it was promised that all these lives, so seemingly unrelated, had actually some red thread that tied them together. For one thing, there is the 'out-of-wedlock' child, which should have revealed itself at some point. Maybe it did, but I am incapable of pointing at it in a line-up.
And maybe I didn't pay attention enough... maybe.
The writing style Polly Samson practices is what I would call "interior dialog" style. Meaning, that she writes in a stenographic way, thoughts that flow through the characters' minds.... incomplete sentences, many times, and here and there, I am not sure who is doing the thinking, or why. The reason for this may lie in that I have not come to identify with all these characters and their little place or city well enough, that I am not part of their community, the way an insider would be... I am just a passer-by, not enough time to settle there. The story does not give me enough clues to figure out "who dunnit".... too bad. I did finish the entire book dutifully, in hopes of solving all its mysteries, but in vain. So I am left with my hunger and thirst! It is frustrating. And I do not want to read it again, in hopes of discovering what I might have overlooked the first time. Too bad, as we French folks say. I give up.

[Lea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid connected-short stories collection, but, as so often, with varying quality. I thought some of the story were really good, bordering on moving and made me want to read more about the characters and their situations. But I didn't like the more whimsical cutesy parts (the camera bit was... urgh). Another thing I found a little off-putting was that all these characters were soaked in privilige, and didn't appear to be aware of it, which is totally fine for an author to write about, obviously. But at times it made it more difficult to connect to them. The stories were best when they told more universal experiences.

[Helen Bussell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Each short story was beautifully written, looking at a group of middle class people in a seaside town whose lives are interlinked. On the surface their lives seem perfect but there is always something to spoil things. The conciseness of each story often leaves you wanting to know more about the characters. A fine example of the short story genre.

[Karen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this style of book, a book of short stories which have interlinking people and themes. Books that often take you full circle. A bit like a run of movies a decade or so again.

In this book its written so you eavesdrop on peoples lives. The peep into the everyday that's takes you'behind the scenes'

I like Samson's writing and I'll seek out more of her writing.

[Jolette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories are possibly my favorite genre, and I read far too few. This is another wonderful example. So British, so sustained and beautifully written I almost want to start reading the book again right away.

[lixy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some parts were better than others.

[Erica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted a quick read - which this was - but someone said all the stories wove together and I didn’t find that. I learned that I am a book reader and not a short story fan.

[Jane Blumsom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written but not very exciting. A slow thoughtful read. Sadly I know I won't remember the stories.

[Donna McCaul Thibodeau]

I read several of these short stories and I realized that I found them dry and uninteresting. DNF.

[Sheenagh Pugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second short story collection I've read lately that was themed in some way. In Colm Toibin's "The Empty Family" the stories were linked by theme and to some extent by very similar protagonists. In this, the link is via a cast of recurring characters; not all appear in each story but they mostly live in the same town and are often related, so that your first instinct on meeting a character called Tilda in the sixth story is to scrabble back through the book muttering "who the hell was she?" until you find she was briefly mentioned as the sister of Anna, from story 2.

Arguably this makes them not so much stories as episodes from an embryonic novel and I am in fact starting to think that what I like best about a collection of Chekhov stories is the variety that belongs to the genre, never knowing if I'll next meet a drunken peasant, a troubled doctor or a pair of illicit lovers on holiday. I'm not saying it can't work to have characters recur through a collection, but I do think that if you pull this trick, the recurring characters and their setting had better be very varied and interesting. In fact the setting is a rather genteel part of a seaside town and the characters are so much from the same background and class as to get a bit samey. It was especially hard to differentiate the various teenagers of each family. There is one character, who I don't think is ever named, since she tends to be a first person narrator, who does work very well in this role. She was brought up by very altruistic, politically involved and socially conscious parents, rebelled against that background and is now habitually sneering at anything and anyone remotely idealistic - if you think that makes her dislikeable, it does, but she is also a witty and amusing voice, as such people often are, and enlivens mightily the stories she narrates, like "The Man Across The River", where she is taken to Greenham Common as a child: "It might be fun to live in a bender, take the kids", Suzanne was saying, and I thought how much more fun it would be if they all dropped dead" and "Morganna", where she is passenger to the eponymous woman, who is not in a fit emotional state to be driving: "I called for her on Tuesdays and Thursdays at two-thirty in the afternoons so we had a clear hour to mow down pedestrians".

"Morganna", though, suffers hugely from a complete change in viewpoint in the last few pages; suddenly we are seeing through Morganna's viewpoint not the narrator's, and though there is the odd perfunctory "she said" to establish her having told the events to the main narrator, it doesn't really come off. And here we come to my main gripe with the book. It is consistent where I don't really want it to be, ie in having this recurring cast; it is inconsistent where consistency really matters, ie in technique. For instance, there is a story, "At Arka Pana", set in Poland (I don't think it any accident that the two stories I like best are set in Hamburg and Poland, rather than Suburbia-by-the-Sea) with a really fine ending:

"The people flowed past, parting like a river around the man and the girl standing apart from each other on the path talking into their mobile phones."

In the context, the use of "man and "girl" is a quiet touch of brilliance (as, in "The Egg", is Celia's reference to a child as "it" rather than "she"). But this adeptness with words and structure is intermittent rather than consistent. "At Arka Pana", which ends so well, begins with a cheap and pointless narrative trick, misleading the reader as to the relationship between two people to no end at all. "The Egg" depends on the reveal of a secret and the mechanics of this are just implausible. Imagine for a moment that you are a man with a secret life, and a woman, whom you know but your wife doesn't, chances to see you in a situation you really don't want your wife to know about. I don't know about you, but common sense tells me you don't (a) invite this woman to your forthcoming party and (b) make a point of introducing her to your wife. And before you suggest that he subconsciously wants to be found out, he clearly doesn't, because some physical reactions can be faked, but going puce with embarrassment is not among them. "Leaving Hamburg", in itself a fine story, contains an attempt at describing an area of Hamburg - "wide streets that were more Belgravia than Muswell Hill". I can't begin to express how useless this is as a description, to someone who knows neither Belgravia nor Muswell Hill, nor how irritating it is that the author should assume all her readers will be au fait with such shorthand. There's also some unnecessary spelling out; in "Leaving Hamburg" I had figured why Aurelia hated tattoos before I was helpfully told.

There's quite a lot of humour, verve and observation in these stories but I don't think the technique is as subtle, consistent or assured as, say, that of another observer of human relationships, Sarah Salway, in her short story collection "Leading the Dance" (Bluechrome).
Comment

[The Bookish Wombat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not usually much of a one for short stories, in the same way as I prefer full-grown trees to bonsai. I can admire the artistry involved in creating a perfect miniature, but I don’t feel an emotional connection to short stories as I often find them cramped and in need of more elbow room. I like to really get to know a character, inside and out, in order to forge a relationship with them – short stories tend to be sketches rather than oil paintings so don’t give me enough time to engage.

I approached reading Perfect Lives by tackling one story a day, so I could let each one have an equal amount of consideration and enough time for them to “settle” in my head. This meant that it took nearly a fortnight to get through the book (well, 11 days to be precise), which is much longer than I usually take with any one fiction book.

As I’m much more used to reading novels, and as I have a job which involves summarising long complex documents, I’ve got into bad habits and often find myself skipping some of what’s on each page of a novel. However, I had to force myself not to do this with Polly Samson’s stories as each word is vital – skip anything and you risk missing the heart of a story, a turning point in a character’s life or a detail that illuminates the whole. The short stories in Perfect Lives aren’t so much about what happens, but rather about why things happen and the effect on the characters within them. This means that slow but sure is the way to go.

Having said all that, I didn’t enjoy all the stories equally and felt that some were less successful than others, but what I loved about all of them were the small details which breathe life into the characters and make them real. For example, right at the beginning of the first story, The Egg, we’re told that Celia comes down the stairs with her dressing gown “belt tightly wound several times at the waist”, which instantly gives an insight into her character and emphasises her role as someone trying to keep things together, tied up and under control.

The irony of the title of the collection is emphasised in the far from perfect lives lived by the stories’ characters. Though their middle-class veneer could lead others to think that all is well, and the characters themselves try to pretend this is the case, the reality can be very different. I found The Man Across The River very unsettling, not so much due to the incident of the title, but more in relation to the benign neglect of the child by the mother more interested in going to Greenham Common than in looking after her daughter (a modern day Mrs Jellyby). Children and their view of the world is also dealt with in Ivan Knows where all the adults disregard and patronise Ivan. He, however, has insights into the world that they never will.

I wasn’t as keen on The Birthday Present, which I felt was the weakest of the collection. It seemed to be trying to be a different type of short story, one with a twist in the tale as the identity of the “lover” is concealed until right at the end. This trick didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the book and made the story feel like a student writing exercise.

Overall I enjoyed the book, but was left afterwards with a sense of sadness. All the stories seemed to have a sense of melancholy seeping out of them, which infected me in the reading of them. I was left feeling that I admired Perfect Lives more than I loved it.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to win this book! I cast my eyes over to my tweet deck whilst i was working away and up popped a tweet from those lovely people at Virago asking a question I happen to know the answer too.. and low and behold I was the first to reply.. and a few days later this great little book popped through my letter box!
So to the book itself, it is a collection of short stories by a lady called Polly Samson. I hadn't read any of her books before. Polly writes with such a wonderful descriptions, the book reminded me at times of Mrs Dalloway, the way she really described the minutia of life. It was fun to dip in and out of other peoples lives and problems through these pages. it was also nice the way she returned to some of the characters in the later stories.

So all in all I am very pleased I won this great book!

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book at Bedtime

Perfect Lives is Polly Samson's second collection of short stories, each linked to the others by themes of imperfection, compromise and the joy of accepting life as it is. Abridged and produced by Christine Hall.

Polly Samson is married to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. She has four children and four step-children. I would rather listen to her husband than these smug stories any day of the week.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought these were ok. The writing was beautiful but there wasn't much there there, if you get my drift. Usually linked stories are my thing, but I never fully believed in the community she was writing about and there was a disconnect between writer and subject, like Samson didn't care much for her characters and was looking down on them from a higher perch. I'm interested in giving her novel a try but have a feeling it might be just like this, but more so.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of short stories. All characters live in the same seaside town in England. It takes awhile to get used to Samson's writing style, and it is difficult to keep track of the how the characters are related (beyond their shared hometown). There is more to like than dislike about the stories.

[Evelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see what the author Polly Samson was trying to do by linking together all of the short stories in this collection, but can't help but wonder why she chose to keep them as short stories and not turn this into a novel/novella? The stories are OK, though a little predictable here and there. Good for a quick summer/holiday read.

[R.J. Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know that not everyone likes short stories. If, like me, you do, then you must read this collection. Eleven mostly linked stories in which the author never loses your attention. The best short stories are like poems -- not a word out of place or in excess, leaving the reader with an insight that wasn't there, or wasn't so clear, before reading the story. I loved this collection.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite boring in my opinion, this is not my type of book.

[Betheliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Equally good on 2nd reading. To keep.

[S · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish. Not my style