Going the Distance - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0954130359 ISBN 13: 9780954130350

Publisher: Tindal st Pr Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

Featuring twenty vigorous, original stories by widely published authors and up-and-coming new talent, this impressive anthology transports readers from Birmingham to Trinidad, Colombia to Canada, and Liverpool to London

Award-winning author Alan Beard expertly compiles a surprising array of contemporary voices in this engaging read. Stories include Gemma Blackshaw's spot-on portrait of an Essex girl on the verge of losing her virginity; Joel Lane’s beautiful, poetical allegory about a man’s relationship with alcohol; and Godfrey Featherstone's heartbreaking tale of an illiterate Birmingham couple, told in the form of a letter from a prison cell. Also included is a story written by Beard himself, which cuts of the quick with a painfully honest study of growing regret and acceptance after a marriage break-up through infidelity. Going the Distance is always powerful, original, and perfectly understated, with each author's voice both presented in a thoroughly strong and enticing manner.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Beard is the author of Taking Doreen out of the Sky. His work has been in several magazines and anthologies including Best Short Stories 1991, Falling Star Magazine, Tell Tales 3, and Telling Stories Volume 3. He won the Tom-Gallon Award in 1989.

Reviews

This anthology celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Tindal Street Fiction Group, a collective devoted to resurrecting the short story in England. Almost all the stories here share a bleak outlook on modern urban life, and this is especially true of those set in the West Midlands, where each inhabits a desolate landscape, physically and emotionally. Loneliness, uncertainty, and the narrator's growing despair are common threads throughout. This all works convincingly in Steve Bishop's story of young uncertain love, "Crosstown Traffic," and in Michael Coverson's tale of lost and aging strangers, "Dance with Me." It works less well in the title story, by Gemma Blackshaw, and in Joel Lane's "The Country of Glass," in both cases due to an overdone workshopped quality. The best take the reader outside the claustrophobic and class-conscious West Midlands. Penny Randall's story of a lonely, wealthy Colombian woman, Leon Blades' Trinidadian tale, and "Sinners," by Barbara Holland, which is set in the Midlands but concerns a group of Pakistani immigrants, all shine and make this a worthwhile collection. Patrick Wall
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Edition details

• Publisher: Tindal st Pr Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0954130359
• ISBN 13: 9780954130350
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 267
• Editor: Beard Alan