Gareth Owen (2)

This was a delightful and quick read. I was a bit confused by the transition between Italian and British settings, but the author has an explanation for this in the foreword. Each story started off deceptively simple but then caught me unawares with a truly unexpected twist. And yet, there was excellent foreshadowing and the prose flowed smoothly. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes good writing and creative plot lines with a serving of irony and justice.

A mixed collection. Some of these are absolutely wonderful, others fairly bland. I enjoyed most the Italian stories, each of them were charming and well observed and beautifully written. I least enjoyed the title story, a kind of ghost story that didn't really hit its mark in my opinion.

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers

A wonderful collection of short stories here from Gareth Owen. From Italian tales of faith, obsession, reconciliation and coincidence, to British stories of a spiralling former rock star, unrequited love and the horror of everything going wrong in trying to complete a simple task, the variation and depth of character that is displayed across twelve very different stories, make this an excellent collection.

And the final, show more delightful story, 'How I Met My Wife', which seemed on a different trajectory entirely for quite some time, caps it all off nicely.

For a time, I thought this might have been an example of a real-world Alessandra/Franco situation (read 'Oh God What Must I Do?'). The first few stories are told from a female point of view, and are all based in Italy. I made a point of checking the author's name, just to be sure.

Finally, I read this on an iPadAir using Apple's Books software package, and I noticed a number of layout issues: paragraph and line breaks where they shouldn't have been, and quoted speech incorrectly laid out. show less

Disclaimer: I received this as an Early Reviewer. No compensation was received other than the chance to read this work.

This book is a set of short stories. Like any story collection, the tales vary some in quality throughout. Overall, though, this was a fast and pleasant read. While some of the stories might have been reordered slightly to make the overall feel of the book smoother, the book in its entirety has a solid feel to it.

Recommended for: those who enjoy short stories; those who show more enjoy writers who play with perspectives. show less