"A man's hands" by Andrew Crawford (Shepdek Publishing, 2012)

11 Stories from "Ink, Sweat and Tears", etc., organised into sections. The first story's much longer than the others, some of which are Flash.

Sean

"The Canny Cyclist". Sean is in York with Rose. They're getting to know each other, wandering in the city centre. We learn that they'd once had a one-night stand in Edinburgh. He didn't contact her until a few months later, after which he took the first train to see her. Rose gets a phone-call and suddenly decides she needs to see her family in Newcastle. She drives them over. They go into an empty house, recently painted, meet an old friend of Rose's, Kevin, a strange cyclist, then while they are making love upstairs her father starts playing Lady Eleanor below.

Sean goes downstairs. Mr Pell's drinking and smoking. He has cuts on his face. He calls Sean Kevin, and explains, vaguely, his emotional situation. Rose comes down, puts her father to bed, goes into her own bed to cry, telling Sean to sleep in another room. He begins to piece together the clues - Rose's mother's dead. But who's Kevin? When he goes down for breakfast, Kevin is there. They talk. Next thing we know, Rose is driving Sean into town. He's catching a train, going north.

Matt

"Gimlet". He feels bad about getting drunk again. He's back in his flat. Without warning, Yanni and Alan are in the room. Or has the scene changed to a bar? Matt later becomes "you". Then "I". Your voice is in my ear. 'We're all avoiding something,' you say.

Jack

"Edinburgh Arrivals" - Her PoV. Jill (a wife and mother) lands in Edinburgh to have an affair with an ex-lover she's not seen for half a lifetime. Seeing him again at the airport she realises it's a huge mistake. "Arthur's Seat" - His PoV. They climb Arthur's Seat. He struggles. "She is looking at my hand as if taking it would be going too far. She grabs my sleeve". From the top there's too much mist to see the city. He gives her a trinket. The chain breaks. 12 blue stones fall. She tells him it's a mistake. She offers her hand. "Edinburgh Departures" - We learn that 20 years before she'd begged him to stay. Now she's the one going, "turning the corner into Security, the place where they check for things you shouldn't be carrying".

John

"Sofitel Gatwick". A man's in a rented room close to an airport. A woman arrives. He was hoping she'd come. She doesn't remove her jacket. She says she has 20 minutes and Michael's outside. They bicker. "He thought he had moved on. He has, but it is all coming back". She looks out the window

'It's sad,' she says. 'All those people coming back from somewhere.' 'Maybe they're tourists,' he says. 'People arriving from somewhere. People at the start of something. Or on the verge of something. People like me.'

Later, He tries to think of the people on the aeroplanes. People who only exist in his mind./ The room is so empty./ He is alone, and he is afraid.

"Player". He wrote a book. It was a minor hit. Nothing major. It got a handful of good reviews. It dealt with a defining moment in his life. This defining moment had to do with things falling apart. ... He had written to understand the past. He'd got an old friend to read it, a women he'd left 20 years before. She suggested that they meet up. They're both married. She'd been with him when the police knocked on his door - something to do with his mother. He flies to Edinburgh to meet her in a pub. She's worried about her memory. Her husband, Michael, arrives to collect her. He imagines his wife suddenly appearing to. They leave. She's forgotten the defining moment. He returns to his "real home" two thousand miles away.

Andy

"Chicken Soup". Andy, a writer, is returning to the campus where as a student he met a girl. He's written a 90k draft - autobiographical but with a happy ending. He goes under what used to be her window. A voice says "It wasn't like that at all," and that she didn't want to remember him. But he wants to remember, and her presence will help. His hands freeze to the railings. Police have to free him. They find out that he's flown from Greece to Gatwick where he stayed in Sofitel, then onto Edinburgh. "Gentleman, we have a problem" - Andy's at a story prizegiving. He's won. In his speech he says "The story is about a middle-aged man who is obsessed with a woman, a girl, he knew years ago. He goes back to the college where they met ... If it's about anything, it's about how people should leave the past alone." He's invited her along. She turns up. He asks to sleep with her. She has a husband and kids. Her last train's at 10. But she agrees. In the hotel room her forwardness makes him change his mind. He'd rather talk all night.

"When iron turns to rust". A writer's in a run-down room. A woman visits. Her husband's found out about the man. The man's wife has discovered his lies. He no longer writes, and the visitor's no longer his muse - "I want it to be like it was ... I want to feel wanted".

Clio

"A man's hands". You continue to talk of the past, of things I don't want to hear. I give all my attention to your hands.

Overall

I like it. The pieces are linked by character and theme. Information is carefully released. I like the details, the descrpitions. The changes in PoV, interruptions and the repetitions keep the reader engaged. There are airports, hotels, stations, bars, visitors from other times. Touch vs memory. Characters returning to places hoping to recover memories. Men age and women don't. Women visit, knocking at doors.

Other reviews

• Carol McKay (By the end, the generic male lead has come through various stages of obsession, from self-destructive alcohol abuse, living hand to mouth, to something close to distaste once he actually comes within reach of what he desires. ... Clarity comes gradually. “If it’s about anything,” the writer character in ‘Gentlemen’ says of his winning story, “it’s about how people should leave the past alone.”)
• Fiona Johnson
• Jim Murdoch (the Jacks, Johns, Andys, Matts and Seans all feel a bit like they all ought to be Andrews ... The metaphor of tourism is a strong one and all the locations in the book—York, Newcastle, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London—are major tourist spots ... It takes a lot of self-control to leave stuff out and to know what to leave out. I was lucky. Within me I seemed to have all the missing pieces to ‘finish’ this book. Others may struggle. That’s life not bad writing. I heartily recommend this book.)