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Some Days Are Better Than Ours
Some Days Are Better Than Ours is a startling collection that explores human life in all its forms. These stories will make you draw breath as you race through compelling accounts of the dark places people escape to and from.
Through her masterful use of language, Barbara Byar skilfully invites the reader into imagined futures and regretful pasts – from war to childhood to road trips to relationships. Her pieces are visceral, sometimes brutal but sliced through with hope. These stories, and the characters in them, strike straight at the realist heart of the human experience and will linger long after reading.
A must-read collection These stories stopped me in my tracks.
—Gaynor Jones, Northern Writer of the Year
These are searingly truthful fictions. Pitched at the border of poetry and prose, they catalogue lives lived at the edge, survivors facing the beauty and cruelty of the world. These fictions will take your breath away.
—William Wall, author of Suzy Suzy and Grace’s Day
Betrayal and brokenheartedness, sex and sadness, disaster and divorce – in Some Days Are Better Than Ours: A Collection of Tragedies, the wants and wounds of Byar’s characters are stark, startling, and unforgettable.
—Meg Pillow, 2019 Wigleaf top 50
Barbara Byar writes flash like no one else; in each of these lucid and furious twenty-nine stories — some no longer than a single page — are wholly unforgettable glimpses into the lives of her individual characters.
—Peter Jordan, author of Calls to Distant Places
Some Days Are Better Than Ours delves into lives misshapen by abuse, exploring the dark side of the will and the flaring of lost souls. Byar’s language is gritty with rage, giving a lucid voice to the vulnerable, the marginalised, the roughshod, all fighting for what has been stolen and squandered, and looking for love between the cracks.
—Catherine McNamara, author of The Cartography of Others
Some Days Are Better Than Ours is an incredibly well-written and emotionally complex journey to the dark places of human experience. Clever, introspective and fearless, this collection will take you to places you never imagined before. A raw and relentless debut collection.
—Anita Goveas, author of Families and Other Natural Disasters (forthcoming, Reflex Press)
Barbara Byar’s Some Days Are Better Than Ours is a collection of flash fictions that dig deep into trauma, tapping into a well of strong emotions. You won’t be able to forget these hard-hitting stories very soon.
—Sophie van Llewyn, author of Bottled Goods, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019
Through her masterful use of language, Barbara Byar skilfully invites the reader into imagined futures and regretful pasts – from war to childhood to road trips to relationships. Her pieces are visceral, sometimes brutal but sliced through with hope. These stories, and the characters in them, strike straight at the realist heart of the human experience and will linger long after reading.
A must-read collection These stories stopped me in my tracks.
—Gaynor Jones, Northern Writer of the Year
These are searingly truthful fictions. Pitched at the border of poetry and prose, they catalogue lives lived at the edge, survivors facing the beauty and cruelty of the world. These fictions will take your breath away.
—William Wall, author of Suzy Suzy and Grace’s Day
Betrayal and brokenheartedness, sex and sadness, disaster and divorce – in Some Days Are Better Than Ours: A Collection of Tragedies, the wants and wounds of Byar’s characters are stark, startling, and unforgettable.
—Meg Pillow, 2019 Wigleaf top 50
Barbara Byar writes flash like no one else; in each of these lucid and furious twenty-nine stories — some no longer than a single page — are wholly unforgettable glimpses into the lives of her individual characters.
—Peter Jordan, author of Calls to Distant Places
Some Days Are Better Than Ours delves into lives misshapen by abuse, exploring the dark side of the will and the flaring of lost souls. Byar’s language is gritty with rage, giving a lucid voice to the vulnerable, the marginalised, the roughshod, all fighting for what has been stolen and squandered, and looking for love between the cracks.
—Catherine McNamara, author of The Cartography of Others
Some Days Are Better Than Ours is an incredibly well-written and emotionally complex journey to the dark places of human experience. Clever, introspective and fearless, this collection will take you to places you never imagined before. A raw and relentless debut collection.
—Anita Goveas, author of Families and Other Natural Disasters (forthcoming, Reflex Press)
Barbara Byar’s Some Days Are Better Than Ours is a collection of flash fictions that dig deep into trauma, tapping into a well of strong emotions. You won’t be able to forget these hard-hitting stories very soon.
—Sophie van Llewyn, author of Bottled Goods, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019
112 pages, Paperback
Published November 5, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
February 5, 2020
Loved these poetic disturbing clips of human life on the brink of rupture. My favourite is also the shortest, Thoughts on Being Strangled on Honeymoon; the title is the entire story and the text is an attempt at explanation, an exact embodiment of how trauma works.
July 4, 2020
Pretty good collection of flash fiction, though the quality of the stories is a little even. A few are very good, a few are mediocre, and the rest are enjoyable, though not brilliant.
April 17, 2020
I’m always admirative of authors that can bring entire worlds, depict insanely convincing characters and trigger numerous emotions with only a few words, a few strokes of the pen. Barbara Byar is one of those authors.
In Some Days Are Better Than Ours, she takes us through the tragic lives of numerous characters – families shattered by death, disease and broken marriages, abuse survivors on a quest for revenge, broken souls trying a new path, children destroyed by war. She explores recurrent themes using different styles, varying the poetic, the emotional, the raw or the R-rated and she excels at all.
The most predominant theme recurring throughout the collection is the one of abuse - physical, sexual, psychological; but also the substance abuse, often the catalyst to those tragedies.
Byar is the voices of numerous victims - fragile mothers, innocent children, naive teenagers. She uses her strong style to denounce ugly truths, shout her anger and disgust. She traps the reader in haunting words and scenes, where what isn’t said is scarier than what is; showing the world through a peep hole, only revealing fragments of a complete picture that might be too difficult to stomach.
She takes us on a wild ride through continents, alternating stories from her native US with the ones from her adoptive Ireland. While the Irish ones tend to be more of the huis-clos type, suffocating domestic dramas from which there is no escape, the US ones are wilder, more theatrical, with dramatic landscapes and fast-paced actions.
Her stories also take us through time, as they spam from WW2 to a near future.
Her war stories are so vivid they are almost cinematographic, bringing the past right before the reader’s eyes.
As for her more dystopian ones, they feel like the artist mucked her canvas with a thick coat of bleakness, showing us an intriguing and terrifying world that doesn’t yet exist but that might not be far off.
The tragedies in this collection are not the Romeo & Juliet theatrical type ones. They are the everyday tragedies.
They are the tragedies that happen behind your neighbour’s closed doors. The wrong turns taken at some stage in life, the choices that result in a world of pain. But in some of stories, it’s not too late to turn things back around and the author drip feeds hope throughout. She also brings humour and hints of surrealism to the collection, making it a multifaceted wonder.
Barbara Byar is never very far concealed behind her characters who she either protects or castigate. Her book exposes unpleasant truths, shows ugly worlds coated with beautiful words. The result is gutsy, brave and honest, it makes you think, cry and feel, and it stay with you long after you’ve closed the book on its stunning final story.
Some Days Are Better Than Ours is published by Reflex Press, the brilliant people that started the “pay what you can” submission fee to their quarterly competitions.
In Some Days Are Better Than Ours, she takes us through the tragic lives of numerous characters – families shattered by death, disease and broken marriages, abuse survivors on a quest for revenge, broken souls trying a new path, children destroyed by war. She explores recurrent themes using different styles, varying the poetic, the emotional, the raw or the R-rated and she excels at all.
The most predominant theme recurring throughout the collection is the one of abuse - physical, sexual, psychological; but also the substance abuse, often the catalyst to those tragedies.
Byar is the voices of numerous victims - fragile mothers, innocent children, naive teenagers. She uses her strong style to denounce ugly truths, shout her anger and disgust. She traps the reader in haunting words and scenes, where what isn’t said is scarier than what is; showing the world through a peep hole, only revealing fragments of a complete picture that might be too difficult to stomach.
She takes us on a wild ride through continents, alternating stories from her native US with the ones from her adoptive Ireland. While the Irish ones tend to be more of the huis-clos type, suffocating domestic dramas from which there is no escape, the US ones are wilder, more theatrical, with dramatic landscapes and fast-paced actions.
Her stories also take us through time, as they spam from WW2 to a near future.
Her war stories are so vivid they are almost cinematographic, bringing the past right before the reader’s eyes.
As for her more dystopian ones, they feel like the artist mucked her canvas with a thick coat of bleakness, showing us an intriguing and terrifying world that doesn’t yet exist but that might not be far off.
The tragedies in this collection are not the Romeo & Juliet theatrical type ones. They are the everyday tragedies.
They are the tragedies that happen behind your neighbour’s closed doors. The wrong turns taken at some stage in life, the choices that result in a world of pain. But in some of stories, it’s not too late to turn things back around and the author drip feeds hope throughout. She also brings humour and hints of surrealism to the collection, making it a multifaceted wonder.
Barbara Byar is never very far concealed behind her characters who she either protects or castigate. Her book exposes unpleasant truths, shows ugly worlds coated with beautiful words. The result is gutsy, brave and honest, it makes you think, cry and feel, and it stay with you long after you’ve closed the book on its stunning final story.
Some Days Are Better Than Ours is published by Reflex Press, the brilliant people that started the “pay what you can” submission fee to their quarterly competitions.
February 21, 2020
These stories are devastating; each one broke a piece of my heart but the beauty of Barbara Byar's writing is do captivating, so compelling that I had to read on. The book arrived at 9 am and I decided to just read one story before I got dressed. I was still in my pyjamas and still reading at 12pm. Every carefully crafted line leads you down a dark path of human tragedy. I can't recommend this collection highly enough, but prepare to have your heart broken.
November 19, 2019
Barbara Byar’s brew of stories in ‘Some Days Are Better Than Ours’ is so strong and dark you could stand up a teaspoon in it. She digs deep into those small-scale tragedies that destroy people’s lives – domestic violence, sexual abuse, cruelty, heartbreak and murder – dealing with her chosen themes with fearless originality and in glittering prose. Barbara Byar is a tremendous writing talent. Don’t miss this dazzling collection of short fiction and watch out for future works by this author.
January 7, 2020
Barbara's short stories and flash fictions are beautifully crafted, authentic works. Plenty of gritty, haunting, recognisable scenarios. She captures her characters' troubled pasts and current dilemmas in amazingly short spaces. They will stay with you much longer than their final sentences. Highly recommend Some Days Are Better Than Ours if you want true life in short bursts. Ideal for short journey reads on bus/train/tram!
March 24, 2021
An extremely strong collection of flash fiction that makes maximum use of the form. Some of the stories are brutal, most are dark and all are well written. There is powerful use of a woman's perspective in a lot of the stories and there is an unflinching hard rock quality to them all. Great debut.
December 22, 2019
An insanely energetic, emotional and moving collection of stories. Raw and icily honest. Read this collection while you wait for the Next Thing from@barbarabyar. I suspect that it will be even better.
did-not-finish
March 25, 2021I put this down after reading just under half of these very short stories. I have realized that I don’t much care for the flash fiction genre. There was one or two that I quite enjoyed, but the rest just gave me a headache.
June 8, 2020
An exceptional collection of tales. Hard to read at times, which merely increased their value. Descriptive, raw, pure and oozing vulnerability. Highly recommend.
June 11, 2021
I loved this beautiful first collection. Barbara's stories are glinting, and very often dark, slices of life where you leave each one regretting that it has finished. Such distinctive writing in skillful, powerful flash fiction. Gorgeous and memorable, every single one.
February 28, 2020
I'd heard a lot about Byar's debut collection and wasn't disappointed. It's visceral, hard-hitting and totally absorbing, with clean, precise imagery and prose. These short pieces contain painful truths and the author deals with subjects that many would shy away from. One story in particular ('The Bar of Chocolate' left me shaking with shock (on my morning commute!), and many lingered on, long after the first reading. I'd highly recommend this collection and look forward very much to the author's first novel.
June 3, 2020
Excellent writing. Short, sharp, shocks of flash fiction and short short stories.
May 29, 2020
We are warned at the outset that this is a collection of tragedies, and the stories, written with a deft hand, and some beautiful, raw prose, are bleak, dark, uncompromising, but there are also moments of hope, of escape, of black humour. They do what all short fiction should, make us think, reflect, decide. These are stories to be read, reread and pondered. A great achievement, and well worth several readings.
February 21, 2020
Review
The beautiful frustration about flash fiction is that it’s short. But therein lies its skill and charm. Little dioramas of drama, conveying a world of emotions, which in most cases in this book (accurately subtitled ‘a collection of tragedies’) is that of sorrow, suffering and longing.
Byar’s word count may be short but, like poetry, the world she creates in these perfectly crafted stories and vignettes is vast and all-consuming in its raw humanity.
I found myself wanting to step inside and inhabit some of these worlds. Porcelain and The Heart of Darkness in particular played like movies in my head, and could be developed further. But the point of flash fiction is that brevity is its strength. You have a snapshot, a glimpse in the rear view mirror, a juddered heartbeat which offers an intense, wildly imagined, beautifully written and ultimately truthful telling of our naked ape existence.
The beautiful frustration about flash fiction is that it’s short. But therein lies its skill and charm. Little dioramas of drama, conveying a world of emotions, which in most cases in this book (accurately subtitled ‘a collection of tragedies’) is that of sorrow, suffering and longing.
Byar’s word count may be short but, like poetry, the world she creates in these perfectly crafted stories and vignettes is vast and all-consuming in its raw humanity.
I found myself wanting to step inside and inhabit some of these worlds. Porcelain and The Heart of Darkness in particular played like movies in my head, and could be developed further. But the point of flash fiction is that brevity is its strength. You have a snapshot, a glimpse in the rear view mirror, a juddered heartbeat which offers an intense, wildly imagined, beautifully written and ultimately truthful telling of our naked ape existence.
May 28, 2023
“Some Days Are Better Than Ours” is a great debut book of twenty-nine lucid short stories by Barbara Byar.
Well written with much emotion, dark, and even a little macabre in places, they are stories that will stay in your mind after reading them.
A collection of tragedies, all of which glimpses into the lives of individual characters in an extremely powerful way.
Individual characters which are, in most cases, quite unforgettable, Barbra Byar is extraordinarily emotional in the way she expresses human experiences.
It took me just over three hours to read and I read quickly. All in all an excellent read and well worth getting a copy of. Which I feel sure anyone who reads it will enjoy.
Well written with much emotion, dark, and even a little macabre in places, they are stories that will stay in your mind after reading them.
A collection of tragedies, all of which glimpses into the lives of individual characters in an extremely powerful way.
Individual characters which are, in most cases, quite unforgettable, Barbra Byar is extraordinarily emotional in the way she expresses human experiences.
It took me just over three hours to read and I read quickly. All in all an excellent read and well worth getting a copy of. Which I feel sure anyone who reads it will enjoy.
November 30, 2019
Barbara Byar's Collection of Tragedies, "Some Days Are Better Than Ours", opens with a powerful piece of flash fiction with the same title, setting the tone for the entire collection.
Byar is not afraid to take risks. In "Thoughts While Being Strangled on Honeymoon" she experiments with language and form; in "Sex Life - Part One" she makes us confront truths we wish didn't exist; in "Yellow" the characters float between reality and fantasy; in "The Pot of Black Gold" she shatters dreams.
In every story Byar presents her readers with a degree of darkness, but she writes with such a light touch, that we almost don't realise the extent of what we're reading. Almost.
An accomplished collection.
Byar is not afraid to take risks. In "Thoughts While Being Strangled on Honeymoon" she experiments with language and form; in "Sex Life - Part One" she makes us confront truths we wish didn't exist; in "Yellow" the characters float between reality and fantasy; in "The Pot of Black Gold" she shatters dreams.
In every story Byar presents her readers with a degree of darkness, but she writes with such a light touch, that we almost don't realise the extent of what we're reading. Almost.
An accomplished collection.
November 3, 2019
Barbara Byar’s Some Days Are Better Than Ours is described as a collection of tragedies. This is an accurate assessment – but far from a complete one. Here, Byar has sifted through the worst aspects of humanity without looking away; but in doing so she also highlights the moments of beauty, the ways people can find light in even the darkest moments.
Barbara is an incredibly talented wordsmith and this book is a stunning example of craft in flash fiction, and Some Days Are Better Than Ours is a strong, tightly themed collection of exceptional writing. Highly recommended for writers and enthusiasts of short form fiction.
Barbara is an incredibly talented wordsmith and this book is a stunning example of craft in flash fiction, and Some Days Are Better Than Ours is a strong, tightly themed collection of exceptional writing. Highly recommended for writers and enthusiasts of short form fiction.
November 10, 2019
Wow. This is an amazing collection of what I would call short stories but is actually called flash fiction. (My first encounter with flash fiction.) Absolutely straight to my core, heart, gut, soul types of stories that punch, wrench, hurt but uplift at times. It’s crazy how so few words can get to the crux and can paint a vivid picture that more often than not is too hard to look at. (I say crazy, but really it is sheer talent.) Very well done, very well done. I look forward to more from this author.
December 1, 2019
This collection of short fiction is a remarkable, compelling and expertly crafted work. The first lines of the opening story sets us on an emotional ride traversing the heart of human truth. From kitchen table to war we meet characters that demand our attention. These tales are confrontational, often harrowing but ultimately irresistible. The standout story for me was the haunting, ‘I Walked 10,000 Worlds for You.’ Dip into this stunning collection and find yours. Barbara Byar is an author to watch.
January 10, 2020
Some of the stories in this compelling collection are hard on the heart, evoking deep swallows past painful lumps while difficult subjects are dealt with. But this is a skill Barbara Byar has - to tell a story of truth, not to hide the ugliness - to show cruelty and heartbreak for what it is. This flash collection of tragedies has sadness but also hope, difficulties but also reasons to challenge hurt, seek light. Results not necessarily nice but worthy. Stories that make us question humanity.
Barbara is an amazing flash writer and this debut collection is a super example of her talent.
Barbara is an amazing flash writer and this debut collection is a super example of her talent.
November 10, 2019
This collection is absolutely breathtaking. Tragedy written so powerfully yet beautifully. I knew Barbara was an amazingly talented writer but I was still left in awe. Some moments are brutal, some are laugh out loud funny, some are sad, all are memorable. Read it cover to cover in one sitting, and will read it again, many times I'm sure.
November 21, 2019
I read this wonderful book in one sitting. The flash fiction genre is one that appeals greatly to me and nobody does this better than Barbara Byar. Her stories may seem straightforward but there is a mighty punch that hits you when you least expect it. The stories are dark and really very extraordinary. I can't wait for the next collection from this clever and eloquent writer
January 18, 2020
Just finished this astonishing collection of flash fictions and am still reeling. Using symbols on a page to evoke experience/emotion/empathy/fear/concern is such a strange and all-encompassing phenomenon when done well. Like witchcraft. These tiny transporting moments are visceral, searing, heart-breaking, rage-making, ugly-beautiful, lyrical, tender, real.
November 10, 2019
'Some Days Are Better Than Ours' is a collection of flash fictions that dig deep into trauma, tapping into a well of strong emotions. You won’t be able to forget these hard-hitting stories very soon. They are truly haunting in the emotions they awake and in the beautiful prose. Highly recommended!
July 6, 2023
One of the most beautiful, gritty, lyrical, unflinching set of stories I have ever read. I poured through them and each one was uniquely resonant and so deeply emotional in different ways. I will read this over and over and find something new to love every time. Fascinating work.
November 18, 2019
Captivating stories, brilliant prose, and haunting imagery. This collection is insanely good.
I highly recommend it.
I highly recommend it.
November 24, 2019
I cannot sing the praises of this collection too loudly. You need to read this collection and walk away from it with a new sense of your humanity. Highly recommended.
December 2, 2019
Beautifully written, easy to read and full of ideas that resonate and linger long after . Wonderful poetic style
July 1, 2020
Byar's collection of flash fiction takes an unflinching look at human relationships in all their messy, and sometimes violent, glory. There is death, revenge, sex, fear and love in this collection. It's certainly not a collection for the faint-hearted. But Byar's fearless use of language transcends the darkness of these tales. For example, 'War has not come to this city, but like the twisted path of the abortionist's wire, the scars are there.' Powerful stuff. But there is gentleness and love to be found too, in among the tragedy.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews