Author:Gervase Phinn
For eleven-year old James Joseph Johnson (or Jimmy for short) life is not always straightforward. In fact, things can be quite complicated, and don't always turn out as he'd planned . . .
Born in 1946, Jimmy lives with his Mum and Dad in a shiny red brick terraced house in South Yorkshire near the steel works. Sometimes the air is thick and metallic tasting, with bits of soot floating around like little black snowflakes. Despite all this, Jimmy wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
His very best friend, Ignatius Plunkett, is a scrawny boy with a sharp beak of a nose, ears like jug handles and a mop of jet black hair. Micky is his rather 'posh' friend from the big houses down the road. The boys get into a few scrapes in the year leading up to the eleven-plus exams, but will they come out on top in the end?
Will Jimmy survive a week looking after Butch, the temperamental, barrel-bodied bull terrier? Will the truth about the trip to buy Dad's tripe ever come out? What really happens to Jimmy's Mum's coffee and walnut cake, and will the mystery of the missing locket ever get solved?
He writes with subtlety and skill... beautifully manipulating the language which veers and soars from the vernacular to the high-flown and summoning characters that are at once believable and sympathetic
—— Daily TelegraphExtremely readable and enjoyable
—— GuardianBrilliantly unsettling
—— ObserverIn clean, uncomplicated prose inlaid with images of striking lyricism, Woodward explores the bizarre possibilities of ordinary people's lives
—— Sunday TelegraphThe down-to-earth dialogue and the deadpan delivery remain doggedly realistic, and some stories retain not only the ring of truth but also its open-ended structure
—— Times Literary SupplementUncanny, absurd and at times macabre, these stories magically combine a poet's eye for imagery with a novelist's complexity of theme
—— Financial TimesThe author's humour often glimmers quietly and there is surreal black comedy
—— Hugo Barnacle , Sunday Timespungent and memorable
—— William Leith , The ScotsmanAn enjoyable collection.
—— Anthony Cummins , Daily TelegraphGerard Woodward falls squarely between the comic lunacy of American short-form virtuoso George Saunders and the everyday rhapsodies of Raymond Carver ... Woodward is actually at his best when he's knee-deep in the ordinary
—— Time OutAt last, Galloway's stories are back in print in one collection...savagely accurate, engaging and funny, she is one of our great contemporary writers
—— Independent on SundayA testament to the sharp eye and shrewd brain of Janice Galloway, one of Scotland's finest writers
—— The HeraldA writer of passion and virtuosity
—— Scotland on Sunday