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A Nail on the Head
Light wear to boards, content clean with toned pages, solidly bound, good+ DJ with some edge wear
- GenresShort Stories
192 pages, Paperback
First published June 4, 1985
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 6, 2022
I cannot tell you how awkward I felt travelling on a train with this in my hands.
I had to cover a different bookshop this week to help out and so I had an hour train ride there and back again. I couldn't love reading anywhere more than I love reading on a train. It just.... Ahhh... Gives me really cosy vibes. The gentle rocking. The ability to just glance up and see wonderful scenery. Rain or shine, it is sublime.
But... If you have a book in your hands where a woman is clawing at a guy's back... It just looks like you're reading smut.
And it isn't. A lot of it is charged. But it is very light on the intercourse. There's more problematic intimacy than there is any of the thrilling variety.
These short stories are really well written and often surprising. They're not predictable. A few are genuinely horror-filled.
Most of them, they're just quirky. They make you wonder about the inner workings of people's lives and relationships. I found myself looking up at my fellow travellers and wondering which of them I'd invite to a dinner party. I decided on none of them and I reassured myself most people are boring again. No story is good enough to convince me that more than maybe 12.7% of people have anything about them. Sue me.
I think only two of these stories blew me away. But none in the collection were totally void of skill. They all had a choice line at the very least.
Bad-natured Dog - about an aging writer being interviewed by a young woman is hilarious and very shrewd.
Not a Recommended Hobby for a Housewife - about a collection of friends who meet each year to compare lives, left me feeling really glad I'd found this book in the charity shop. It made me really touched.
I'd definitely read more by the author. Hopefully I'll find something at the library, because I've had no luck tracking it down elsewhere.
I had to cover a different bookshop this week to help out and so I had an hour train ride there and back again. I couldn't love reading anywhere more than I love reading on a train. It just.... Ahhh... Gives me really cosy vibes. The gentle rocking. The ability to just glance up and see wonderful scenery. Rain or shine, it is sublime.
But... If you have a book in your hands where a woman is clawing at a guy's back... It just looks like you're reading smut.
And it isn't. A lot of it is charged. But it is very light on the intercourse. There's more problematic intimacy than there is any of the thrilling variety.
These short stories are really well written and often surprising. They're not predictable. A few are genuinely horror-filled.
Most of them, they're just quirky. They make you wonder about the inner workings of people's lives and relationships. I found myself looking up at my fellow travellers and wondering which of them I'd invite to a dinner party. I decided on none of them and I reassured myself most people are boring again. No story is good enough to convince me that more than maybe 12.7% of people have anything about them. Sue me.
I think only two of these stories blew me away. But none in the collection were totally void of skill. They all had a choice line at the very least.
Bad-natured Dog - about an aging writer being interviewed by a young woman is hilarious and very shrewd.
Not a Recommended Hobby for a Housewife - about a collection of friends who meet each year to compare lives, left me feeling really glad I'd found this book in the charity shop. It made me really touched.
I'd definitely read more by the author. Hopefully I'll find something at the library, because I've had no luck tracking it down elsewhere.
September 15, 2016
A short and fairly good collection by an Irish author with a good reputation. The common theme is the variety of ways that erotic love can go bad. The stories run the gamut from the very good ("Appearances", "A Reproduction"), to the very funny (the eponymous story and "Some Retired Ladies on a Tour"), to the unnecessarily allegorical ("Mama"), to the not very good ("The Complete Angler"), with a few forgettable but not regrettable tales thrown in for good measure.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews