Cold Toast

by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

Rooted in 70s and 80s Britain, this evocative flash fiction collection captures the moments when girls and women first glimpsed their own power – or lack of it.
Set against a backdrop of smoky kitchens, playground politics, and flickering TV sets, these stories trace the quiet rebellions and uneasy compromises of lives shaped by expectation and constraint. Two women discuss an unfaithful husband at the school gates. A father trades his daughter’s first kiss for a fishing trip. A girl becomes convinced the silent calls to her home are from the Yorkshire Ripper.
By turns tender, raw, and defiant, this collection lays bare the tension between freedom and conformity, love and survival, and what it meant to come of age in a world that wasn’t always ready for you.

58 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2025

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the seventies, we eat cold toast, we call the Speaking Clock, and we wait for our time.

Cold Toast is a collection of flash fiction by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, who in October 2024 won the Bath Flash Fiction Award with her piece Visiting Lenin’s Tomb - the judges' report highlighting the subtle brilliance of the story can be found here.

It is published by the small independent press Dahlia Books. And this is the latest book from the brilliant Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month club, which raises funds that support the UKs most exciting annual book prize, as well as showcasing a collection of books from the vibrant small independent press scene.

The author herself previewed the collection in a Q&A for the Bath Flash Fiction website:

It’s out in spring 2025 and is a collection of flash fiction about the female experience where characters navigate girlhood and then young womanhood. The stories are rooted in 70s and 80s Britain, a time of the rise of the women’s movement, a spike in divorce rates and the emergence of households headed by single mothers. As ever in my writing, the personal is political and it’s unashamedly feminist. I worked hard on sequencing the stories, so that when read together, there is a suggestion of an arc and shift by the end. And I cannot wait to reveal the stunning cover art!

The cover art is indeed striking - Portrait of Astrid (1973) by Tim Mara, and it is this picture that is the basis for the first story, 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin', which begins:

If you were to ask anyone what sprung to mind about Astrid, wouldn't be how she toured as part of a Pan's People cover roupe, or how she queued for hours to audition to be the next Bond girl, only to walk away last minute, feminist flyers stuffed into her handbag, arms linked with flame-haired Sheila the 'bra-burner' from Putney, or even how she hand-printed chapbooks of her freeform poetry, correcting the mistakes with nail varnish and selling them at Camden Market. It would be her boots. Astrid? they'd say. Silver Boots Astrid?

The 2.5 pages of the story manage to take in a time capsule of 1970s life, the gradual rise of feminism but also the threat of male violence, specifically here the Saturday Night Strangler, whose wife provided an alibi for his whereabouts and who was only identified posthomously from DNA testing.

Several of the pieces - 29 over 51 pages - are from the perspective of a girl in a household where her parents are in the process of, or have separated, but some later stories are from years in the future looking back, such as the final story, The Story You'll Never Tell:

That story you’ll never tell is the house on the street in every Seventies horror movie you devoured in the blue fug of your best friend’s mother’s cigarette smoke. The story you cannot tell has shutters and a deck and a swinging For Sale sign.

Another great book club selection.

The publisher

Dahlia Publishing is a small independent publishing press based in Leicester. We publish contemporary, original fiction and champion regional and diverse voices. Dahlia Publishing was established in 2010.

As a small press, we undertake most of our publishing jobs in house and are often under-resourced to do the things we love. For this reason, we can only publish what we really, really love. We publish 2-4 books each year and continue to build new audiences through our projects, The Asian Writer and Leicester Writes.

Our diversity policy is at the heart of everything we do and we’re passionate about pushing for change. We would love the industry to be more reflective of the multicultural society we live in.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris drops the reader back into a 1970s childhood with carefully selected details. Ladybird-shaped buttons and orange wallpaper recreated the era for me. But once in those seventies rooms, it is the emotions that the author explores. There is much about absence, the characters searching for missing fathers, for certainty. And when men appear, there is sometimes threat. A father gets his daughter to kiss a fisherman because he wants to go fishing. The Yorkshire Ripper is on the news and a shadow on every street corner...the fake tape mentioned in the book was a huge shock to me, growing up in Sunderland. There are stories that display the first steps into adulthood, into a world outside the home. I hope that Aldridge- Morris is busily working on the next steps of adulthood in her pinsharp flashes of life.

[S A · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection about women and young girls coming of age in the 70s and 80s enthralled and moved me. The author is a real storyteller: each situation is intriguing and unique and you really want to keep reading to find out what happens to the strong but often vulnerable characters. ‘Electric Storm’ sees a young girl swimming between her mother’s boyfriend’s naked legs in a thunderstorm; in ‘Hotlines’ a ten-year-old thinks the mysterious silent telephone calls to her house are from the Yorkshire Ripper; in 'Stress' a mother and daughter discuss where the correct stress should be put on a word in order to distract themselves from the implications of a diagnosis. The stories reward multiple readings: you discover new delights every time: dry humour, great period details such as rotary phone!, deft and sometimes stunning imagery, symbolism (the ‘gritted teeth of the steel paddle’ in ‘Undertow’, for example.) Above all, the author has mastered the art of natural, authentic dialogue. I loved this exchange in ‘Double Lives’: “… and I ask is everything okay? and she says yeah, if finding out your husband’s living with another woman in the arse end of Wales is okay, and I say what, you mean your husband Rhys? and she nods and says yes, my husband Rhys,” Utterly delicious. Wholeheartedly recommended.

[DE Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is an incredible walk through three decades of stories about women with feminist dreams, men behaving badly, and the children who grow up in their wake.

In twenty-nine flash fictions, Aldridge-Morris offers a master class on the form. Ranging from the ekphrastic “These Boots Are Made for Walkin” to the hermit crab “Dinner Party Classic Recipe” to the brilliant extended metaphor of “Elephant,” the reader is treated to a wealth of domestic stories. Enough cannot be said about Aldridge-Morris’s ability to pin an era. She is simply a wizard of time-and-place vibe. Hamlet cigars. Cigarettes stolen from the purses of stepmothers. The hotline to learn the current time of day. Flintstones reruns on television—or better still Hart to Hart. Orange sofas in the seventies. Loop carpet in the eighties. Each detail placed so authentically in its scene that the reader cannot help but be transported.

The collection begins in the 1970s, a time of women’s lib, serial criminals, continual cigarette smoke, and long calls on rotary phones. “Divorce is like sugar,” one character announces of the era. Men do whatever they want while women wait and wait and wait for the life their women’s studies texts have promised. The kids are—hmm, where are the kids? No one knows. They’re going to have to fend for themselves.

And they do. As the collection shifts to the 1980s, Aldridge-Morris turns the mic over to a collection of child narrators trying to survive their latchkey, two-household lives. The microfiction “Wall Space” encapsulates the underbelly of blended families brilliantly in 100 words flat: A daughter recounts her dad’s house with his new wife. Photos on display everywhere. Mostly of the stepmom’s kids, though. Often them enjoying a happy time with her dad. The lone photo of the narrator? Replaced with a pet certificate for a dog the stepmom wishes they had.

As the collection progresses into the 1990s, a new register emerges. The kids have grown up. Whatever they thought about their parents’ choices, they now struggle to make sense of their own messy world. Meanwhile, the parent generation grapples with illness and end of life worries. Everyone is just trying to make it through whatever this thing called life is. And it’s here where this book shines. Because for all the delicious time-period specific feel of the book, there is a timelessness to the struggles of these characters. At the end of it all, we may or may not work through the detritus of our lives, but we will have to say goodbye—and no one has a clear map on how to do that. Aldridge-Morris’s genius is that she doesn’t try to draw one, she merely sits with us while we all stare down the inevitable together.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a wonderful small collection of flash fiction from fellow Granta alumn Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, whose stories constellate around 70s Britain. I'm not British so I can't claim any nostalgia but I imagine readers from the area will find a lot of the references here charmingly personal. As with any collection of stories I had my favorites ("Fogged Horizons", "Happiness is a Cigar Called Hamlet", "Undertow") but I think Aldridge-Morris' writing is bright enough and varied enough to spread those favorites out among readers - surely no list will be the same.

[Jude Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection showing the lives of girls and women in the 70s and 80s. Stunning and memorable writing that manages to exactly convey the concerns of this era.

[Patricia Q. Bidar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was both entertained and moved by this debut collection featuring stories of women and girls in 1970s and 1980s England. I recommend!

[Bronwen Griffiths · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each story in this flash fiction collection stands on its own but a theme runs through the whole. Set in the 70s and 80s, against a background of the Yorkshire Ripper, divorcing parents, sex with un-named men, smoking, drinking vodka, and sometimes real loss, Aldridge-Morris creates tender and strong stories which feature young women negotiating their way through the changing norms of the time. Recommended.

[Taina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lyhyitä, sivun tai kahden mittaisia flash fiction tai short form fiction kertomuksia. Teemana tyttöjen ja naisten paikka yhteiskunnassa - kenellä on valtaa, kenellä ei? Tarinat sijoittuvat 1970-1980-lukujen Britanniaan. Tykkäsin lyhyestä muodosta, mutta kovin moni tarina ei jäänyt mieleen.

[Polly Eadie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! A collection of amazing flash fiction stories that are warm, funny but often achingly moving. Aldridge-Morris uses this short form so skillfully, conveying such profound emotions, interactions and events with laser-sharp precision and balance, packing a punch that lingers well beyond the reading. I can't wait to see what she does next!

[Jacquie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Republic of Consciousness Book Club book this month. I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't normally think to pick up a book of flash fiction so was amazed that so much could be built so quickly. At turns funny and moving, with a really strong sense of time and place.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really impressive, written with a blistering urgency

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant debut collection (got such a strong chronological momentum and connected characters/objects it reads more like a novella in flash to me) and absolutely loved it! Highly recommend!

[Jan Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant incisive flash fiction collection. As a woman who came of age in 70s-80s Britain the stories really resonated. Some laughs, some squirms , and many thoughts provoked as I was drawn back to those days by the author’s keen prose.
Thoroughly recommend

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cold Toast is a collection of flash fiction. The main focus is one domestic life in 70’s Britain - through that premise more themes start spinning out - and in the interconnected stories - a timeline starts to appear.

An excellent book and another sterling choice from the republic of consciousness book of the month club.

[Kik Lodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virtually all the stories in this debut collection set off a flurry of goosebumps. The voice in each piece is astounding. It’s growly and defiant, and smacks at the kernel of what it is to be a woman surviving, loving and pissing about in this mad world.

[Myna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was happy to receive an advance copy of Kathryn Aldridge-Morris’s debut flash collection, Cold Toast. Kathryn’s stories of women and girls are always compelling. I found the themes of power—and lack of power—especially moving in this collection. Each story builds on the previous one, bringing a nuanced glimpse into the challenges we faced in the 70s and 80s. Those of us who lived through those times might find a hint of nostalgia, through not only music and fashion callbacks, but also the remembered hopes and fears of a growing women’s movement. Electric stories of rebellion and compromise fill this volume. I enjoyed every one!

[WndyJW · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of flash fiction is outstanding. By simply recalling the mundane aspects of domestic life in the 1970s-80s: the color and fabric of furniture, the smell of cigarettes, the foods our mothers made, the off-hand remarks of fathers, the overhead phone conversations of mothers, Aldridge-Morris draws our attention to moments in the lives of women and girls that were much bigger than they seemed.

I am always amazed at all that most talented authors can convey in so few words.

Highly recommended collection!

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this sharp and moving collection. Deeply steeped in nostalgia, these characters took me right back to the electric eras of the 70s and 80s. Astrid in the silver boots is a queen! Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Highly recommend.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! My daughter and I read the stories aloud to one another while travellling and the stories connected us via a glimpse of life when I was growing up and our shared experiences as women. Each story is beautifully written and powerful, highly recommend!

[GKH · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly witty, nostalgic snippets