"A writer with extraordinary range" it says on the cover. I was worried to see that there were no acknowledgements of these stories being previously published. The stories are rather traditional, set in Suffolk, sharing many details and locations. Lots of fog and mist.
- The White Doe - a wife with a grown child sees a white doe. She reads several myths about white stags, but only one about a white doe - about a girl, Marguerite, who turns into a doe at night and is killed by her brother and his hunters. Her mother died 6 months before - some of her mother's belongings (birth certificate, etc) are in the loft. She has migraines. At "The final encounter" with the doe, the doe's "head was raised and turned in Fran's direction, her ears alert with communion - or warning". She has a bad migraine, recalls words of Marguerite's ghost, and dies.
- High House - a domestic cleaner lives in an area of floods. She finds a half-dead fox and gives it to an engineer employer to look after. The engineer tells her about global warming, tectonic drift, etc. Later he invites her to his big barn. The fox isn't the only animal kept there. There's also a boat.
It's a 1st person story. Not all the language seems appropriate - "she saw me and gave me a glare of deepest umbrage, as if it were her own best carpet"; "The fields that have re-emerged from the departing flood" - Ringing Night - Research into campanology hasn't led to a worthwhile story.
- The Watcher of Souls - Rebecca, a cancer survivor (a widow) finds a tin of old love letters by Annie under an owl's nest. At the bottom of the pile is a letter from a husband telling Ann[i]e not to contact him again. Rebecca feels pregnancy pains. A baby's skull (the offspring of Annie's affair?) is under the tin. Scattered in the plot are sections about owls - biology and myth.
- Mad Maudlin - a man watches videos/photos of a pub through the ages - a ghost story which didn't work for me.
- Nightingale's Return - Flavio visits the English farm where his father Salvatore had worked (and heard nightingales) as a PoW. In Salvatore's head the birdsong melded with the voice of Irene, the farmer's 16 y.o. daughter, who he loved. The farm had meant a lot to him. The story ends when Flavio knocks on the door and a woman opens it saying "You've come." (Flavio had already sent letters). Lots of Italian research, but no story. Why did he send his luggage ahead?
- The Level Crossing - a 28 year old woman, 16 weeks pregnant jogs to the level crossing as usual, the crossing where her great-aunt, her namesake, died, aged 11. It's an unplanned pregnancy, and the father's not interested, not answering calls. She seemed to stand on the train tracks, getting off at the last moment. The baby kicks. She decides to go on. Lots about how it feels to jog. Lots about mist and fog.
- All the Flowers Gone - 3 scenes from 3 eras. 3 woman from 3 generations cycle to the same airfield, giving or getting flowers. A welcome variation on the other stories' structure.
- Whispers - A Cambridge history academic, promising when young but spending 21 years reading when he should have been writing his definitive biography, buys a Martello tower, an analogue of the UL's tower ("There was a sense of something cleansing about a spot of unabashed modernism, especially in this city so absorbed by its own past, a past so smugly not red-brick."). He's working in library when someone whispers his name - "Above almost all else, he abominated the library whisper. Quieter than its stage cousin, it nevertheless shared with it an irritating overstated quality". The Martello tower's an empty shell, with a whispering gallery effect. His subject of interest may well have stayed there. Sleeping there on the floor he thinks he hears voices, and is inspired to continue his book. Maybe Jenny, Finlay, Ernie and Sue are needed to info-dump. The first page's style contrasts strikingly with the start of stories I read nowadays - it comes from another age.
- A Curiosity of Warnings - Young cycling history academic Bill meets motorcycling archaeology student Freya while he's visiting a location in an M.R.James story, about Paxton, who finds an ancient silver crown. His grandmother was born there too. He's there for days but we're not told what goes through his mind during the long rides. There's a surprise when he checks the church register.
- The Interregnum - The job of a rector who's on maternity leave is taken over by a female theologian who has a good knowledge of paganism. Another story that looks like thinly dressed research.
- Stone the Crows - Research into crows/rooks and into WW2 RAF airfields. No.
- Silver Studded Blues - Research topics: butterflies and symbiosis. Inappropriate language: "I was afraid to meet the accusation in their hard, glass eyes"; "disregard the signals from her brain"; "mutually oblivious"; "I shouted his name, to no response"; "which on drawing closer I discerned to be the errant Mungo". No.
- The Witch Bottle - Research topic: Witches. A woman gets a builder to update her cottage. "Like the house, she was at risk of slipping the moorings she'd kept so closely bound since the shipwreck of her divorce, and floating adrift". No.
- Curlew Call - Research time: bird-watching. A girl stays with an old lady artist, bird-watching in her spare time. When the woman's ill enough to stay in hospital, the girl has more time. She searches the house, deduces (I think) that a sister of the artist died young and there's a confusion about names.
- Mackerel - Research topic: Fish (recipes and marine ecology). As Hattie travels to her gran, many of the details from other stories are mentioned in sections that alternate between grandmother's and granddaughter's PoV, though from the language that's hard to tell. We learn that Hattie's globe-trotted, that her grandmother's hardly left the area. I don't get the ending.
I think "High House" was my favourite.
Middle-aged people reflecting on the past. Research worn heavily. Repeated phrases in italics. Very little crisis-resolution, or change in the main character. Chatty info-dumping. The past repeating itself. Saturated air/soil. Normal states of mind. Much the same diction throughout.
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