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Park Stories
Direct Hit: Hyde Park
Miss Simkin’s favourite bench had seen her through peacetime and war. What was she to think of this contender for its charms?
Park Stories is a fantastic collection of fiction set in London’s Royal Parks from eight of the country’s best short story writers.
Park Stories is a fantastic collection of fiction set in London’s Royal Parks from eight of the country’s best short story writers.
15 pages, Paperback
First published May 7, 2009
10 people want to read
About the author
Adam Thorpe
52 books53 followersAdam Thorpe is a British poet, novelist, and playwright whose works also include short stories and radio dramas.
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon, and England. Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature.
His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide, including that of novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian, calling it "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.
Adam Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children.
-Wikipedia
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon, and England. Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature.
His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide, including that of novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian, calling it "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.
Adam Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children.
-Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 10, 2013
Priggish private secretary Agnes Simkin is annoyed that her favourite park bench has been invaded by a male interloper. She's an old nearly-40 by today's standards, but this is 1949 so she'd have been born about 1910 ... Oh, the same age as one of my grandmothers.
Not the most original of pieces, and occasionally exposition was too noticeable (always difficult in short stories) but I very much liked the sentiments and tone.
Not the most original of pieces, and occasionally exposition was too noticeable (always difficult in short stories) but I very much liked the sentiments and tone.
May 31, 2009
Part of Park Stories, described as "new fiction set in London's Royal Parks, from eight of the country's best short story writers." Such a wonderful idea and I couldn't resist picking up this one, even though my heart belongs to Regent's Park. This bittersweet short story is set shortly after WWII and is about Miss Simkins and the interloper who sits on her favorite bench in Hyde Park. A well-polished gem of a story that captures the park, that era, and Miss Simkins' quiet yearnings.
Bought at Daunt Books.
Bought at Daunt Books.
April 29, 2017
-1 star because the ending made me feel so desolate!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews