Today’s review is about an excellent short story collection, but first I want to introduce the venue. Splice is a new review site and small press set up by Daniel Davis Wood. It has been online only a couple of weeks, but I think it’s already establishing a distinctive and interesting approach. Each week, the site focuses on a single title: a review is published on Monday, followed by a feature or extract on Wednesday, and a round-up of related links on Friday.
This week’s book is Mothers, the debut collection from Chris Power, who writes the Guardian’s ‘brief survey of the short story‘ series. I’ve written the Monday review of Mothers, and I found it a fascinating book to read and think about.
Mothers is a collection of ten stories, mostly featuring characters who are lost in some way, often at moments of great change in their lives. Three of the stories concern the same character, Eva, her relationship with her mother, and what happens when she becomes a mother herself. Mothers is also particularly cohesive as a collection – not that the stories are linked as such, but they cast light and shade on each other in a way that’s quite remarkable to experience.
Some links:
- My review of Mothers.
- A Q&A with Chris Power, over at Splice.
- Two stories from the collection: ‘The Crossing‘ and ‘Johnny Kingdom‘.
Mothers is published in the UK on 1 March by Faber & Faber.
Book details
Mothers (2018) by Chris Power, Faber & Faber, 304 pages, hardback (review copy).
28th February 2018 at 5:04 pm
Thanks for the link; Splice looks a really good venture. Enjoyed the extracts from the stories, too. Well done on becoming a reviewer with them.
16th March 2018 at 10:59 am
Thanks, Simon! I’ll definitely be keeping in touch with Splice. I’m keen to see where it goes, and I wish it well.