Three Roads

by Emma Timpany

How do the choices we make, willingly or not, define us?

A young man working in a menial job finds a way to grow closer to a lost love. A long-married couple’s relationship is tested by the arrival of a rare bird. With the benefit of hindsight, a woman recalls a childhood episode of acute appendicitis. An outing to a plant nursery brings simmering family tensions explosively to the surface. Two walkers on a beach, unused to the suddenness of a tropical nightfall, lose their way. The chance to grow flowers in a Cornish field brings two strangers together, allowing them both a chance to heal.

The characters in these stories find themselves at crossroads: for better or for worse, their lives are about to change. In settings which range from Cornwall’s hidden valleys to the grey, gold and green of Paris in spring, from Central Otago’s alpine lakes to the Milky Way’s river of light, come bids for freedom, transformations, and another chance to get things right.

138 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2022

About the author

Emma was born and grew up in the far south of Aotearoa New Zealand. She lives in Cornwall.

She is editor of Botanical Short Stories, an anthology of stories about plants and flowers published by The History Press in April 2024. Her books include the short story collections Three Roads and The Lost of Syros, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2015.

Her novella, Travelling in the Dark, won the Hall and Woodhouse DLF Writing Prize 2019. It was long-listed for the Not the Booker Prize 2018 and selected as a Big Issue Summer Read 2018.

She is co-editor of Cornish Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary Cornish Writing which was shortlisted for a Holyer an Gof Award 2019.

Emma's short stories have won the Sara Park Memorial Short Story Competition 2013, the Society of Authors’ Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2011, and the Society of Women Writers and Journalists’ Theodora Roscoe/Vera Brittain Award 2011. Her work has been published in literary journals in England, New Zealand and Australia.

Reviews

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always talk about how Isabelle Kenyon and Fly on the Wall are putting out some great short stories, and I have Isabelle to thank again for this one, although this book comes to us via Postbox Press. And it’s fantastic.

There are some interesting themes up for discussion, and some stunning prose and interesting word choices, including the word “syzygy” on the first page and the slang term “smoko” for a cigarette break. I liked the whole “three roads” thing too, along with the way that it relates back to the concept of trivia.

All in all, it was a cracking little read and now I’m looking forward to interviewing Timpany.

[J Fearnley · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I started reading I thought one or two of Emma Timpany’s stories would stand out for me, would remain with me longer than the others. At first I thought ‘ah, yes, that one’ I could picture the couple, I loved the ending that stopped it being mundane, normal and the chuckles became a broad grin bubbling over into laughter. There, I thought, that’s it but then another popped into my mind hot and full of youthful yearning. But wait! Then there’s the one were you say ‘I know that, wish I had a Jeremy’ a different kind of loss, the beginning of loss that ebbs and flows. Or the outrage you feel for one so young. But no, it’s this one the one were the need for aloneness in order to keep a lost love close reigns over everything. And then there’s the utter sense of loss that occurs in more than one story heart rending, painful but you can’t choose one over the other because, well because. The theme of loss maybe repeated but so is love – lost love, yes, but also young love, seeking love, older love, other love – they bring tears, laughter, joy and hope.

Then there’s the second reading because these stories deserve more than a single read. So you think ‘this one’ because the gut wrenching devastation settles in. There is such sadness and tears. You move through the stories remembering those moments, words, feelings but also finding more that touch you they were there before but you only feel them now. Then after all the emotional ups and downs there’s the one. The one that brings healing and hope ever after. Ah, yes that’s the one! But wait..

I love that so much can be said in so few words, that a connection can be so strong in such a short time. Beautifully, starkly constructed stories yet so expansive in meaning, in description and in how each reader is touched by them. Three roads – the authors, yours and mine – converge in the writing, the reading and such tri-via is always welcome.

I loved this set of short stories. Some will touch you, connect with you in one moment, others at another but they are all beautiful, all beautifully written, all have something to say you just have to hear it in your mind, in your heart or deep down in your soul.

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon for the kind invitation to be a part of this wonderful book promotion for Three Roads and other stories by Emma Timpany. My thanks also go to PostboxPress (Red Squirrel Press) for an eCopy of this book in order to review. Thoughts are all my own.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here’s a collection of stories that linger long in the mind after reading. The descriptions are exquisite and the slow unfolding is beautifully controlled. Sometimes we don’t quite get to the action as with ‘A Bird So Rare’ where a marriage threatens to break but doesn’t quite; sometimes there’s action but still everything holds as in ‘Over the Dam’ where a young girl’s anxiety is only just held in check despite witnessing a motorbike accident. Always there is a tension, like the meniscus on a too full glass of water, and the sense that at any moment everything will overspill. Always too there is beauty in the writing. These stories are quietly wonderful, secret and whispered; I want to shout about them and to say ‘READ THIS COLLECTION!!!!’ And if you do read them, you won’t be disappointed.