An audio book. Standard stories about ghosts, affairs, childlessness and misunderstandings using many stock "Father Brown" characters along with little sons of single mothers, and drug smugglers. Their language varies much less than their profession/class does. If you care for diversity, go elsewhere. And the plots aren't outstanding. Sometimes, yes, it is all a dream. And yes, a sharp icicle is an ideal murder weapon.
"Frost" has 2 timelines, which adds interest. Like some of the other ghost stories, it ended sooner than I expected.
"The fairy child" has a very predictable plot. Here's the act of unfaithfulness - "Behind us an enormous moon was rising from the circling mountains and somewhere on the waters of the loch a lonely nightbird cried. I hardly know what made me let him do it. The magic of the night. The warmth of the sand. The ache of rejection in my heart which needed so badly to be comforted and stilled. All these things must have helped to enchant me as we sank slowly together to our knees in the moonlight, still kissing and I let him slide the pale blue of my nightdress from me shoulders". Birdsong is common. In a later story, "somewhere near a gull cawed in the night".
In "The poet" a schoolgirl and a rather older boy become penpals because she likes the poems he's published. When they meet she's disappointed by his unpoetic looks. He gives her a poem he's written about her and suddenly she's keen to go out with him. He has such nice eyes.
"When the chestnut blossoms fall" is a trilogy where each of Mistress, Husband and Wife has their say, though only the final part is in the first person. The 3 pieces recount the same months. Sometimes the same bits of dialogue are replicated. The two women (early 20s and early 30s; the man's 60+) secretly stop taking the pill. The letter that the mistress finally sends the man re-appears at the end of the wife's piece, though we're not told the consequences. So much more could have been made of this scenario. I think having section in the first person would have helped. Appropriately, the mistress's section has the most overt symbolism - "I'm going to have your baby". There was a long hush in the room. Even outside the road was empty for a moment as the traffic was halted by some distant red light. Then the deep throbbing of a bus passing, the high red roof brushing beneath the branches, shaking the trees so some of the blossom fell."
Setting a story in the past doesn't mean that the style must be of that period too. It's harmless enough though, and the setting lets the male characters be more realistically smug. A heroine "felt a strange twist of longing deep inside her" when a man took his shirt off ("strange" appears often - looks, feelings, etc). Even in the contemporary stories there's lots of hearts thumping, hearts sinking, hearts leaping with happiness, and one heroine thinks "my heart should have been singing". Men’s eyes are striking, and they say so much. They are most often light blue and piercing. I think "wearily" is the most used adverb, though there are many others to choose from. Consecutive sentences in one story end with "hopefully", "miserably", "angrily". Words like "slumber", "forlorn", "enscounced" and "foreboding" pepper the prose. "to her chagrin" appears twice in one story.
The stories feel long (the early paragraphs often aren't needed), yet they sometimes end just when the life-changing dilemma is presented. There's "show" and "tell" (rather than letting the dialogue speak for itself). Character traits are drilled until the reader finally gets the message. I like some of the observation - broken seedtrays; the clambering over the handbrake; walking through thawing leafmould - but often the descriptions have a dutiful, generic air. There's a striking lack of zoomed-in detail. "Reality effect" attempts (to convince the reader that things really happened) are most common when ghosts appear.
The main character in the 150 minute long "A family Affair" is strikingly unconvincing, switching between gullibility and bravery whenever it suits the flimsy plot. The language doesn't help -"'I was not terrified,' I denied hotly. Smiling unrepentently he bowed slightly".
In "Catherine's cat" (or it may be "Katherine's cat") there's interesting symbolism. A little girl thinks there's a big black cat on her wardrobe. In the night she hears her father looking for his wife. He's worried. He looks in Catherine's room. She sees dark hairs on his pale legs below his dressing gown. She hears her mother return and her parents talking. Her mother says that she's never loved Catherine, that the marriage has never been happy, that Catherine's always liked him more that her. He apologies for being boring. In the morning Catherine wonders if it was all a dream. There are black hairs on the bed where the cat has been. At school she cries in class. She tells the teacher about the cat. The teacher tried to be understanding. The school receives a call from hospital - her mother's been mauled in the house by a big cat. At home her father says he didn't realise that the night's conversation was being overheard. He tells Catherine that her mother said she didn't like Catherine only to make him angry - grown-ups play silly games like that. He gets the old suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. It was his father's - empty except for a few tickets, with labels from exotic countries. He puts it in the loft. There's an identification of the cat with Catherine, and also (because of the hairs) with her father. The father, who promised to his wife that he'd try harder, stows his passed-down excitement in the loft - also repressing Catherine's feelings?
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