My Life with Eva

Intimate portraits of lives in transition, marked by loss, longing, and the search for connection.

A dying woman in a hospital bed assumes another patient’s identity to acquire her blackcurrant cordial and a visitor. A man becomes a detective to explore his curiosity about his wife’s friend, with disastrous results. A monkey uses a computer to update a Shakespearean tragedy. People begin journeys that never end, or live lifetimes in a single dream.

This collection brings together prize-winning and critically acclaimed short stories that explore the complexities of the human condition. Alex Barr's characters grapple with infidelity, aging, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world. For readers who enjoy character-driven narratives and literary explorations of identity and belonging.

Alex Barr read Mars as the Abode of Life and wanted to be an astronomer, but Schrödinger’s equation foxed him. His birth marked a turning point in the Battle of Britain and he wanted to be a pilot, but the RAF lost patience with him. After seven years as a journalist (reaching the zenith of his career as wire editor of The Wichita Beacon) he read The Pleasures of Architecture by Clough Williams-Ellis, gained a Dip. Arch. with Distinction from Portsmouth Polytechnic, and for seventeen years taught architecture at Manchester Met. In 1996 he and his wife Rosemarie (a ceramic artist) moved to a smallholding in North Pembrokeshire. His haphazard career has included work as a bus conductor, ice-cream vendor, kitchen porter, and garden laborer. He has won prizes for poems and short fiction, but none for sport. The stories in this collection span the period from 1980 to the present.