Description
Book SynopsisThese are tales from the post-industrial scablands – stories of austerity, poverty, masochism and migration. The people here are sick, lonely, lost, half-living in the aftermath of upheaval or trauma. A teacher obsessively canes himself. A neurologist forgets where home is. A starving woman sells hugs in an abandoned kiosk.
Yet sometimes, even in the twilit scablands, there’s also beauty, music, laughter. Sometimes a town square is filled with bubbles. Sometimes sisters dream they can fly. Sometimes an old man plays Bach to an empty street, two ailing actors see animal shapes in clouds, a cancer survivor searches for a winning lottery ticket in her rundown flat. And sometimes Gustav Mahler lives just round the corner, hoarding rare records in a Stoke terrace.
Trade ReviewAlthough each of these compelling stories stands alone, there are at least two possible links between them all: first, the political nature (with a lower-case “p”); and second, the desperate need these characters have for connection in this isolating world. Such themes unite them as a collection. This is a short story collection that I strongly recommend.
-- Ruth F Hunt * Morning Star *
The images created in these stories linger long after the book has been shut: an Andy Pandy Nightdress, a soldier digging in the mud, a girl on a till trying to pause her life and a biography completely crossed out in red pen. The stories in Scablands may be short, but Taylor’s superb word weaving skill ensures the tales last so much longer than their actual length.
-- Lisa Williams * Everybody’s Reviewing *
Taylor not only provides evidence that as an endlessly variable, malleable form, the short story is alive and well. Indeed, he gives his readers every reason to rejoice in its continuing good health, and this, despite the fact that so many magazines and journals which used to print short stories have gone to dust. Arnold Bennett, that hospitable, generous champion of writers of all kinds, would have been delighted with Scablands, and so, for what it’s worth, am I.
-- John Lucas * London Grip *
