Throughout her career prize-winning novelist Jane Gardam has been writing glorious short stories each one hallmarked with all the originality poignancy wry comedy & narrative brilliance of her longer fiction Passion & longing metamorphosis & enchantment are Gardam's themes & like a magician she plucks them from the quietest of corners from Wimbledon gardens & cold churches from London buses & industrial backstreets A mother watching her children on the beach dreams of a long-lost lover an abandoned army wife sees a ghost at a moorland gate a translator adrift in Geneva is haunted by the unspeakable manifestation of her own fears & a colonial servant wreaks a delicious revenge on her monstrous masters Gardam's cast is wide & wonderful saints & mystics trollops & curmudgeons yearning mothers & lost children beloved figures such as Old Filth & less familiar
- but equally unforgettable
- characters like Signor Settimo the sad-eyed provincial photographer marooned in Shipley or Florrie Ironside the ferocious matron he seduces With a mischievous ear for dialogue a glittering eye for detail & a capacious understanding of the vagaries of the human heart Jane Gardam's stories will captivate sadden & delight