Cockfosters: Stories

by Helen Simpson

A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year

In these nine virtuoso stories, Helen Simpson turns her wickedly wry wit to the stations of life, the vulnerabilities of age, and the lives of ordinary people in complicated times. The title story follows two old friends as they ride the London Underground to Cockfosters--the end of the line--to retrieve a pair of newly prescribed bifocals. "Erewhon" depicts a reversal of gender roles as a man lies awake in bed fretting about his body shape, his dissatisfaction with sex, his children, and his role in his marriage. And in "Berlin," a fiftysomething couple embarks on a "Ring Cycle package" trip to Germany, recalling the ups and downs of their life together as they make their way through Wagner's epic. Funny, warmhearted, and deeply insightful, these tales brilliantly balance devastation and optimism as only Helen Simpson can.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, Contemporary, London, 21st Century

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2015

About the author

Helen Simpson is an English novelist and short story writer. She was born in 1959 in Bristol, in the West of England, and went to a girls' school. She worked at Vogue for five years before her success in writing short stories meant she could afford to leave and concentrate full-time on her writing. Her first collection, Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories, won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award while her book Hey Yeah Right Get A Life, a series of interlinked stories, won the Hawthornden Prize.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. (In particular, the mystery author Helen de Guerry Simpson is a different author.)

In 1993, she was selected as one of Granta's top 20 novelists under the age of 40.

In 2009, she donated the short story The Tipping Point to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the 'Air' collection.

Reviews

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this book in the new section of my local library – I have several books of hers that I have read over the last 20 years (Four Bare Legs In a Bed & Other Stories [publ. 1990]; Hey Yeah Right Get a Life [publ. 2000], and Constitutional [2005 publ.] I liked them all.

And I liked this one, but I can’t do handstands over it. It started out strong and then fizzled over the last third or quarter of the book. And that last part of the book contained a novella which I found painfully boring. Here are the stories and my ratings and where they were initially published and a few pithy comments from me here and there. 🙃

• Cockfosters – 4.5 stars, orig. published in The Guardian
A woman has to retrieve her glasses (varifocals) from the railway supervisor’s office and the story is split into station stops along the way to the office. The woman is talking to another women and they haven’t seen each other in years and their conversation is very entertaining to read! Clever format, too.
• Torremolinos – 3.5 stars, orig. published in The Guardian
I didn’t know what Torremolinos was ( Mediterranean resort town in southern Spain's Costa del Sol region). A man is in the ICU recovering from coronary artery bypass surgery, and is talking to the guy next to him who is from the prison next door.
• Erewhon – 4 stars, orig. published as Night Thoughts in Granta Issue 115, 2011
Clever…a man wakes up early and is bemoaning how his wife treats him. He has to do all the work in the house…his kids are ungrateful. Helen Simpson is showing us how it would feel if there was an alternative universe and women behaved as badly as men do in the real world. https://granta.com/night-thoughts/
• Kentish Town – 2 stars, orig. published in The Guardian
Very boring., A book club with four women discussing Dickens’ The Chimes (is a novella written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol).
• Kythera – 4.5 stars, orig. published as Cake in the Telegraph
Very nice. A mother is making a birthday cake for her daughter who is probably in her 20s, unmarried…mother is just looking back on her life with her daughter. Uplifting.
• Moscow – 3.5 stars, orig. published as Strong Man in the New Statesman
A successful business woman tells us a bit about her career (and being a stepmother) while a man repairs her and her husband’s freezer. She makes a lot more than her husband, Nigel, does.
• Cheapside – 1.5 stars, orig. published as Ambition in the Financial Times
Quite boring (to me). A 56-year-old lawyer who is full of himself has lunch with a friend’s 17-year-old son, and the lawyer’s mission is to convince him to go to law school.
• Arizona – 1.5 stars, orig. published in the first issue of Freemans, October 2015
Incredibly boring (in my opinion). An acupuncturist having a discussion about sex and menopause and children and aging with her client.
• Berlin – 1.5 stars…the novella (or a long short story), 61 pages
So so boring (in my opinion). Tracey and Adam are married and apparently Adam did something egregious, and Tracey is thinking about leaving the marriage. The story involves them on a tour of opera houses in Germany so they go to a lot operas.

Reviews:
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/bo...
• https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/bo...

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simpson’s sixth story collection is full of wry, incisive reflections on aging, loss, regrets, gender roles, and a changing relationship to sex. Most of Simpson’s characters are in their late forties, a liminal time when they’re caught between older parents and still-needy children. The nine stories are all named after places; some titles work while others are arbitrary. Many pieces are dialogue-driven, almost like scenes in plays.

In “Kentish Town,” one of the best stories, book club members meet to discuss Dickens’s The Chimes. Simpson weaves in discussion of the plot with commentary on the state of the nation as the ladies set the world to rights and make New Year’s resolutions. It’s a perfect story to read in the run-up to Christmas. The overall stand-out is “Erewhon,” named after Samuel Butler’s satirical utopian novel of 1872. It quickly becomes clear that gender roles are reversed in its fictional world.

See my full review at For Books’ Sake.

[Lisa Tuttle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admired an earlier collection by Helen Simpson (Dear George) and adored "Hey yeah right get a life" -- this was a stylish, clever, observant author with her finger on the pulse of contemporary life (back in the 1990s), I thought, she seemed to write about people like herself and her friends (getting older as the years passed), to zero in on contemporary concerns and mores but in doing so she seemed also to reach a deeper truth that gave the stories a lasting power. But this book disappointed me. It felt facile, the insights shallow -- they were readable, but almost instantly forgettable. (I know there was one story I liked better than the rest, it had some measure of sharpness, but now just a couple of months later, I can't remember if it was the one about the English tour group in Germany, or the book group discussion in London.) There's one I recall because it was so awful -- "Erewhon," a fantasy of gender role swap that is utterly cliched and obvious. A time traveller from the 1950s might find it provocative, but it is hard to imagine the modern reader who would find it worth the time spent reading it. Would her earlier stories still seem as good if I read them now? Have I changed so much? Is it me, or is it these stories that don't live up to her earlier promise (and all those glowing reviews)?

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm conflicted about these stories. Each story is named for a city it takes place in or I suppose I should say som of the stories were previously published under other names but retitled for this collection. There were a few which were a tongue in cheek gende flip which I dint enjoy because they dint provide any startling insight. The longest an best entry is called Berlin about a mature English couple on a vacation to Germany to attend a week long Wagner Ring Cycle performance with like aged people. It's as much about their lengthy marriage as their impressions of the music and her Simpson shines with insight, in fact this story alone makes this collection worth while.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the short stories in Helen Simpson’s collection are titled with geographic locations (Arizona, Berlin, Moscow), but the author’s real target is the geography of transformation and loss. Most of the characters are middle-aged and many are dealing with the indignities of aging: a first set of bifocals, for example. Peppered in are strong observations of – among other things – gender inequality, the problems inherent with out-of-control capitalism, the pressure to identify a successful albeit unfulfilling career.

Helen Simpson’s prose is easy to read, which belies, of course, the fact that all effortless prose takes a good deal of effort to make it that realistic. And whether a reader loves or merely likes this book will, in large part, depend on what he or she seeks in a short story.

For me, I wanted a little less in-your-face “here’s how to think” narrative. Take, for example, Erewhon, where Ms. Simpson takes the so-called natural order and turns it on its ear, with the woman firmly ensconced in the man role, working too hard and not understanding her put-upon spouse. Yes, it was fun to read and yes, it revealed how the unequal set-up is not a good thing, but I wanted more subtlety. Kentish Town is about a book club meeting – focusing on Dickens – and again, the sense of subtlety is missing: “We’ve allowed a pack of shameless greed-merchants and a few brainiacs with maths PhDs to rig the entire system over the last twenty years so that nobody can understand it.”

The last and longest story – Berlin – in which a middle-aged couple travels to see Wagner’s entire “Ring” cycle, a catalyst to tearing down the emotional distance they’ve built up, was, for me, the most satisfying. But for the most part, these stories reminded me of a luscious dessert at the end of a hearty meal — the taste lingers for a little while and then is too-soon forgotten.

[LK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh the little indignities of middle age. A lovely volume of short fiction. Only one didn't hook me.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Simpson’s latest collection of short stories, Cockfosters (heh), focuses on older people in their forties and fifties, that no man’s land that’s past middle age but not yet hit decrepit old age. Cockfosters is also, like all of the Simpson collections I’ve read, really good.

All nine stories are named after places (Erewhon, named after Samuel Butler’s novel of the same name, is the only fictional one) which is appropriate as they’re about where their characters’ are in their lives now, where they’ve been and where they’re going, in the physical and spiritual senses.

The title story is about two women in their fifties catching up on the friendship they’ve put on hold after years of devoting their lives to their families. It’s a heavily symbolic story as the two head back to Cockfosters station on the Piccadilly line to retrieve one of the women’s glasses; the stations they pass are like stages of their lives with the last signifying the end of something, or another transition maybe.

Kentish Town is a lively book club discussion between female friends as they chat about their lives, families, jobs, in between drinks and comments on their selection, Charles Dickens’ The Chimes. Cheapside is an amusing look at a fifty-something lawyer who’s onto his second, younger wife, while having to double down on his work to meet all his financial commitments, regardless of his heart condition, and trying to talk his doctor’s son into the profession - surprisingly the lad isn’t interested!

Besides being beautifully well-written - the sentences fly by, they’re so skilfully crafted – the stories give readers a very real glimpse into the lives and minds of older people who’ve had careers, raised kids, and been married for years. Simpson’s characters are brilliant because she captures their voices and identities so realistically. I’m not a past-middle aged woman experiencing menopause and struggling to keep herself invested in her decades-long marriage but I have an idea of what that person’s life must be like because of Simpson’s story Berlin. Which isn’t to say it’s depressing (though it is a little!) - it’s actually strangely compelling to read, all the more so because it’s a life I’ll never live; such is the power of fiction.

I didn’t love all of the stories. Erewhon was too gimmicky with its gender reversal - the male is the beta to the female’s alpha and won’t the reader now understand what women have to go through in this modern world, oh please. And Kythera is about a mother remembering raising her daughter while baking her favourite Lemon Drizzle cake, the sort of saccharine drivel I’d expect from a creative writing student than someone as original as Helen Simpson.

Simpson takes incredibly complex but everyday things like marriage, relationships and kids and comments, observes and explores them fully and imaginatively all while spinning out compelling prose. Cockfosters is an accessible but artistic collection of some really excellent subtle short stories. Helen Simpson does it again!

[Mary Warnement · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I read short stories, my first fictional love. I started the first story, saw that I liked her style, but really checked it out for the final story, Berlin, and read that longest one first. A couple in their late 50s plan a trip to watch the Ring cycle with his mother but she dies. Tracey and Adam go anyway. The wife's inner thoughts, primarily during performances, make up the meat of the story, which centers on his infidelity. I don't share her response; I'd be angrier and want an admission of guilt--she just wants an admission of fact. She's so accustomed to excusing his behavior that she can't stop herself.
150Berlin's memorials to Nazism and Holocaust mirror her attitude to her husband's guilt, and perhaps her own.
175 Wagnerian finale

In two stories, Simpson writes from the male perspective: Erewhon and Moscow. The role reversal in Erewhon made me smile, until I saddened too much at its truth.

Reading the title story, Cockfosters, about two middle-aged friends riding the Tube to the end of the line to retrieve reading glasses left behind made me wish I'd thought of writing a story about the passing stations inspiring reverie on past moments in life connected to those stations.

68 Rabenmutter: Ravenmother, German for mothers who work

114 petite mort, the English and Americans use this French phrase to mean orgasm, but the French say jouir, enjoy. I remember my French prof at Loyola mentioning the first fact, and when I followed up by asking what the French use, I blushed at the thought that my question would appear flirtatious or inappropriate at the same time I could see him thinking the same thing.

I will definitely look for more of her stories, and I applaud Knopf publishing this size and format. The hardcover is a joy to hold in one's hand.

[Leslie Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quiet, honest and wry short stories about women in middle-age is as tender as it is disturbing.

Helen Simpson has been writing short stories for a long time--in fact, COCKFOSTERS is her *sixth* collection--and I've just now been introduced to her?! She's British, and that might be part of it, but still. I see her as a contemporary to Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, and perhaps maybe Lorna Lanvick (ANGRY HOUSEWIVES EATING BON-BONS) and maybe even Joyce Carol Oates.

Each story is a perfect 'sit' for a read. That is, you cruise through any story (except maybe the last) in about 20-25 minutes, so a great pick if you know you'll be short on time (in my case, I read this on the plane and it worked nicely for my people-watching-airport-attention-span). Hummm...maybe I'll write a short on *that?!* But really,that's what many of the stories in COCKFOSTERS are: stories about nothing (kind of like Seinfeld in that sense).

The stories included are mostly about women in their 40s and 50s, revolving around identity, reinvention, changing bodies/sex lives, empty-nesters.If those topics don't resonate, then maybe not the best pick for you.

I was completely poised to give this collection a 5-star rating because the writing is really superb, but the meaning of the last story was lost on me and also, I didn't find a common thread tying any of the stories together, except *maybe* the age thing.

For all my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com
Special thanks to Alfred A. Knopf for this review copy. All thoughts are my own.

[Wendy Armstrong · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought Cockfosters on the strength of enjoying Four Bare Legs in a Bed in the mid-90s (free with a magazine): I remember it as subversive and fresh. Cockfosters is bloody awful. Agree with others who said the weirdly old-fashioned 'Erewhon' is clichéd tripe, utterly predictable from the first paragraph. Belongs in Women's Realm circa 1985. The book club story ('Kentish Town') was also dull drivel, with its shriekingly clunky & conspicuous Dickens references all over the place. Am giving up after having just read 'Kythera', which turns out to be a mother's sentimental letter to her daughter interspersed around bits of a lemon drizzle cake recipe. Gentle, frumpy, dull; waste of a fiver.

[Marian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a review coming in the Mail on Sunday, which I won't insert here (MoS is not online!), but I will say that the publisher blurb up top is ridiculously deceptive! Jeez, most of the far-flung locales mentioned are visited, if one can even say that, briefly, in characters' minds. Why blurb it like this? Head scratching.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well-done short story collection. I usually don't like the idea of a story starting you randomly in someone's life and then letting you off without a resolution but the introspection present in some of these stories somehow made that alright.

Erewhon had to be my favorite, if only for the non-Handmaid's Tale aspect of it.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant short stories, especially Erehwon and Arizona.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best collection of Helen Simpson that I have read.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful stories. Loved them.

[Mythili · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed Simpson’s blend of astute feminism and light subversion (also, that Britishness).

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wry, funny, insightful short stories of women and their relationships.

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cockfosters is a collection of short stories by Helen Simpson. There are nine stories all named after a place. Yes, Cockfosters is a place, a London suburb. Most of them are quite short. Berlin is more a novella, occupying almost half the book – a middle-aged couple who are in Germany to see the Ring Cycle in its entirety, a vacation planned with his mother before she died, but they could not get a refund. One is in the fictional Erewhon, as fictional as Samuel Butler’s as gender roles are completely reversed.

The stories are mostly enjoyable, though too often the conversations seem contrived, structured to say something about women, sexism, inequality, war, government, and politics. These conversations do not feel relaxed and normal. They are serious conversations. A book club discussion is actually about Tory restructuring the economy and betraying the promises of the past. A visit to the acupuncturist is about menopause and women’s value in the world.

A lot of the book is focused on the second class position women hold in society which is why so many of the conversations seem awkward. Sure, women talk about it, but this forthright expression sounds more like pronouncements on Facebook than conversations. But that is my only complaint. I like the politics, I like the people and the topics. Sometimes the prose is so beautiful for example, a wife thinking about how a long-married couple have two histories, sliding layers, “tectonic plates of it shifting over the decades together.”

Here is this from Arizona, “Sometimes when she woke from a flabbergasting dream Liz would lie very still to see if she could net it before it fled; perfectly still, eyes closed, not moving her head, as if the slightest shift would tip the story-bearing liquid, break its fragile meniscus and spill the night’s elusive catch”

Beautiful, original metaphors and prose makes me happy. Many things about Cockfosters, in particular that name, Cockfosters make me happy. I would wish for more real conversations, but this is otherwise a good collection of stories.

★★★
http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpres...

[Ginny · Rating 1 out of 5]

In short order I’ve now read two different collections of short stories. I didn’t like the last one. I liked this one far less. I saw the book in the library and remembered it had been on my mental “to read” list based upon (what I vaguely recall) was an interesting review from The Times just over a year ago.

Given my paltry experience with the genre, I may be a poor judge. However, maybe my experience is inconsequential and these stories just suck.
These stories are all short. They waste my time in guesswork, which I presume the author thinks is catching, gripping, or whatever gimmicky cliche she wants to satisfy herself with. The trouble is, these short stores are short and waste the little time I have with them with trying to figure things out, and I haven’t built up a reservoir of interest in any characters to be motivated to keep my mind in the mystery to do so.
Also,the stories are uniformly depressing, dystopian, otherwise unsettling, or just blah. Nothing to even make me want to finish the book - which I concede I didn’t.
Good riddance to bad story telling.

When you get to the end, which I skipped to, you see that all (I think) of these short stories were originally published independently in the Guardian or some other source. So, this author just cobbled them together to resell them. They don’t belong to one another at all. Maybe that’s the norm. But, it annoyed me - okay, I was already annoyed for the reasons set forth above.

The one bit of revenge I got on this author for wasting my time is that at least I didn’t buy the book. I merely rented it from my library. Now I get to pour out my frustration with this dissatisfying book by writing this horrible review, and this afternoon toss this book into the return bin and allow it to evaporate into oblivion. For, I will easily forgot this unremarkable book.

[Ian Plenderleith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Her fifth volume of short works, which is some kind of publishing accomplishment, particularly as she's not that good. The ideas and themes are attractive enough - especially for middle class mid-lifers - but there's something about the dialogue between her characters that strikes me as completely unnatural. And like Kate Clanchy, she's a little enslaved by the conventional formats of what a short story is apparently supposed to be, meaning there's little by way of surprise or originality in either content or form. Take 'Kythera', which is a letter from a mother to her daughter in the form of a birthday cake recipe that ends up with a couple of nice lines*, but you know this is the kind of story they take out at creative writing classes and say, "Now this is how you write a short story", and that thought makes me slightly ill.

* The narrator talks of her daughter's teenage years: "There followed showdowns in changing rooms and bust-ups on high streets; handles were flown all over the place, and I started to feel quite glum until one day, ding! it dawned on me that it was nothing personal... It wasn't me you couldn't stand: it was the me-mother. [...] I had to hold on to you, yes, but I also had to get off your back."

Much as this passage contains a certain truth, I hate the insertion of the word "ding!" in there because it almost completely spoils it. Even if it reflects what such a mother might write to such a daughter, I don't care, it's as annoying in print as it would be if spoken. And there were a lot of places in this volume where I thought the same thing.

[Adrianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well crafted short stories. Oftentimes I feel short story collections require review at a level more sophisticated than I am comfortable providing - makes me feel presumptuous. I appreciate Simpson's skewering of the book club Kentish Town. On the other hand, I know there are deeper digs going on in the story, but I'm not familiar enough with all of the literary references in the story to get them - is that the point? Is the dig on me, the reader, and me, the book club participant? Do read Erewhon (see Wikipedia reference, below), wherein this society the husband is the long-suffering second class citizen trying to hold it all together with work, kids and catering to an oblivious spouse. Do women sound that whiny? Why do we put up with ourselves and our partners if things are that bad? Are all aspects ridiculous? Am I just in a pissy mood? LOL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon
Erewhon: or, Over the Range /ɛ.rɛ.hwɒn/[1] is a novel by Samuel Butler which was first published anonymously in 1872.[2] The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed where Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as "nowhere" backwards even though the letters "h" and "w" are transposed, as it would have been pronounced in his day (and still is in some dialects of English). The book is a satire on Victorian society.[3]

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any collection, there are highs and lows, but I liked most of these stories as they dealt with people "of a certain age" having varied reactions to the subject of aging. Most liked, Kentish (all the stories bear geographic titles), as it concerns a book club in which the members have a problem staying on topic. They do discuss Dickens in a way that is quite familiar, and some of their observations were laugh out loud hilarious. Also amusing was the gender bending Erewhon, in which a husband wakes up in the middle of the night, and unable to return to sleep, stresses about things classically a wife's concerns. Extremely clever. I won't point out what I thought were the weak spots, because that might adversely influence a reader, although in reading some of the other reviews of this book, people have loved the same stories that others have hated. Such is the subjective nature of the taste of readers.

[Owen Townend · Rating 3 out of 5]

This being my first introduction to Simpson, I find myself fascinated by the narrative style of this collection.
It's focus is on character revealed through what are mostly chores: something I've seen attempted before though not in such volume.
It seems that Simpson is keen on dialogue and, more troubling, interweaved thought processes of one or two characters. I say troubling as it is difficult to keep track of this throughout the narrative.
Nevertheless I thought the place name titles were a cute if underused gesture and generally admired Simpson's unique technique.

Notable Stories

• Erewhon - a subtle satirical subversion of sexual oppression: the boys get objectified.

• Cheapside - I enjoyed the subplot about the coffin caper: in fact it was better than the plot.

• Arizona - a fine example of the 'character and chore' style about acupuncture and menopause.

[Mind the Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Som tubenörd och frequent Piccadilly Line-traveller, om än novellskeptiker, har jag haft den här i väskan i drygt en månad och läst då och då. Plockade upp den hos min local indie, Sheen Bookshop, bl.a. för att jag kände igen författarens namn från Hampstead Heath-novellen http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

Målgrupp: the Sandwich Generation. För att riktigt känna igen sig bör man nog vara 50+ och förälder med erfarenhet av monogam monotoni, men det kan vara bra för alla att förbereda sig generellt på den livsfasen. Grande finale-novellen där huvudkaraktären gör bokslut över sitt liv samtidigt som hon genomlider Wagners Ringen under en familjeresa till Berlin är min favorit vid sidan av Cheapside.

[Pratyay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this collection of short stories (tbh, anything that has a subway/tube/metro station as the title is bound to grab my attention) and even though I love anything that is generally slice of life, this nonetheless stood out. Helen Simpson does well to lure you into the lives of the characters and doesn't let the end of the short story feel like an end at all which is a hallmark of a great short story writer in my opinion. My only (really really minor) gripe is that the themes of the stories felt somewhat repetitive by the time I got to the penultimate entry, at which point I didn't read Berlin which was a shame cause I heard it was the best. But that just be my personal feeling. Nonetheless, I loved this read and look forward to reading her other works :)

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nine short stories examining life in middle age as experienced by English men and women often on a journey of some kind; in "Erewhon" (same title as the book by Samuel Butler 100+ years ago about a Utopia that is not really so utopian), things turn out to be not so ideal when women have more power than men. In "Cockfosters," two old friends travel on the Tube to retrieve a pair of misplaced glasses as they simultaneously reminisce about their lives together as friends. In the longest story, "Berlin," a couple travels through Germany as part of a Wagner's Ring cycle travel package. The wife is trying to decide if she will remain with her husband. The ending, like life, is ambiguous.

[Didi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a little while to understand that the stories were not narratives. I got particularly confused when the discussion was an internal monologue like in Kythera. I particularly liked Erewhon and Arizona but i can't say why. Overall, I couldn't really tell you why this collection of short stories was put together just by reading only the book... Did all the conversations happen at tube stations or in different age groups or genders or something else? I have no idea what binds these short stories together...

[Stephen Hickman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflection for fifty somethings. I enjoyed 'Berlin' in particular, though I would have to say more broadly,this is middle class educated angst and as such I felt no sympathy for any of the characters. I would go further and say I sort of disliked the lot of them. As a male I expected to cop a few hits having been pre-warned that the men here are a little one-dimensional, but I had the same criticism of the female characters. There's a reason this socio-demographic is made into comedies like Notting Hill and Four Weddings, et al. Played straight, it is a bloody drag.

[Nathalie (keepreadingbooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t have much to say about this one. I didn’t dislike it as such, but I didn’t love it either. It was a comfortable read, much more so than the short story collections I usually read, and rather cosy in some respects, but most of the time I found it slightly boring. It didn’t challenge me in the least, and it wasn’t cosy enough to make me revel in that aspect either. It didn’t feel like the stories aimed to achieve anything or provoke any feelings in the reader – they just were. Not the best note to end my year on, but at least it was an easy, short read.

[Sarah Maguire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this selection of short stories. I like the narrative form, and the blurb suggested that they were all along themes which would generally interest me: ageing, relationships, purpose in life etc. However, I just couldn't get on with the tone. Each story felt as if it was trying to neatly and didactically illustrate an issue rather than engaging the reader with an interesting story. Pretty disappointing overall.