fiction, short stories

Mourning the losses of jobs, marriages, parents, and occasionally their former selves, the characters in The Beauty and The Hell of It stumble forward in their searches for meaning, arriving at moments of clarity in curious ways: rescuing a one-handed statue of Jesus, shredding a copy of Jane Eyre and fashioning the pages into paper airplanes, submitting Mac and Cheese for marks, and assuming the identity of a stranger for a serving of gnocchi. These stories will appeal to readers who enjoyed the pivotal moments of ordinary life in Sophie Stocking’s Walking Leonard and Other Stories and those who want a slice of contemporary womanhood served up with dark humour as offered in Meghan Bell’s Erase and Rewind.