Search results for ""author padrika tarrant""

Long-listed for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story PrizeSongs of the drowned and a dog with wings…“The world was a grey place once, concrete grey and striped with grey; clay against stone. The pigeons stretched out their scrawny lives and lived as creatures must. Yet they were not hateful birds. They wore their poverty like overcoats; they sat upon the highest places and drizzled the whole world with their compassion. Their souls were dignified as tarnished spoons; pigeons bore witness to the sadness and the tearing of the wind.”By turns tender and unsettling, this book lurks at the tattered edges of the world, where Satan’s daughter wants to die of love and a woman is paralysed with fear in the 24-hours Tesco. There are jokes here too, and you cannot trust the ground beneath your feet. The angels keep stealing God’s fags and the dog is hauled up before a kangaroo court.Fates of The Animals is a book for those who remember fairytales and the TV Test-card; those who like to feel a little uneasy; those who sometimes lie awake in the night.

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Shortlisted for The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2012In the house where Marie lives, the cutlery is running wild …Madness and fairy story creep hand in hand in this darkly comic tale. At the top of a narrow driveway there is a shambling Victorian house full of dust and stairs. The walls inside are ancient emulsion, sloughing off the distemper walls in gorgeous ribbons.The mice that infest the dining room chimney-breast are living out their own dreams and nightmares, learning voodoo and the meaning of love and forgiveness. In The Knife Drawer, dead bodies miraculously vanish as if scraped to nothing by pudding spoons. Marie’s mother has rather lost her wits since she did away with her husband. She could swear they’re out to get her; even the house gets messy on purpose, all by itself. Marie’s twin is living in a hole in the back-garden, small and round as a cherry pip, waiting to be discovered.In The Knife Drawer the steak knives grow so hungry that they scream. When the children murder the rent man, things get a little out of hand …

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