On p.viii she writes "In my experience, short stories are triggered by two seemingly disparate images, which jolt an electric spark". Quite a few of the plots involve more than one issue - quite often love between women and men a generation apart.
- In "Blind Date" Jo, a 50+ woman, is waiting for a man to arrive. He's late. We learn about dating at that age. She doesn't want to spend Xmas alone again. PoV switches to Maeve, whose husband is going senile. Their relationship has been difficult at times. They haven't seen their daughter for years. Maeve doesn't want to report his illness. She locks him in the house. When Jo looks up to see a man enter the pub she barely recognises it as her father. He's escaped. He doesn't recognise her. They talk. He recalls being happy in a buttercup field with a girl. Jo recalls the happy moment. But no, he's recalling a moment with Maeve. Another man enters, looks around and leaves. At the end, Jo arrives on Xmas eve at her parents'. They've all made up. He might recognise her.
- "How Are You?" - When Diana and Malcolm first got a pool, friends would phone asking how she was, hoping to be invited over. Diana's been a widow for 8 months. People have stopped phoning. Her daughter Meredith visits with her 9 year-old son. Meredith and her mother don't really get on. Diana sees her grandson face down in the pool and jumps in to save him. He's fine, puzzled why Diana jumped in fully clothed - trying to drown herself? At the end Meredith asks "How are you, mum?" And Diana told her.
- "An Arrangement in Grey and Black" - Whistler is painting his mother. In the passage "There is a silence. Just the stroke, the loving stroke, of brush upon canvas. Outside the Thames flows, the waves stroking the bank. The gardens of Cheyne Walk are bathed in sunshine" I wonder if the repeated "stroke" and the sunshine "bathing" work. And "Outside" sounds odd. Whistler can foretell the future. When his mother worries about having no grandchildren he says "Forget reproduction. You will be reproduced, Mother dear". At the end a century or so has passed. A woman artist 20 floors up in the same area wonders about her art when her daughter gives her a Mother's Day card showing Whistler's painting.
- "Changing babies" - Duncan's only young. His father has moved out. Xmas is approaching. There's lots of observation -
- "In the shops, tinsel was strewn over microwave cookers"
- "Duncan visited his dad twice a week. He slept on the sofa. Its cushions had a silky fringe which he sucked before he went to sleep"
- "Duncan knew every corner of the Zoo, even the places hardly anyone went, like the cages where boring birds stayed hidden."
- "he searched the pavement for rubber bands the postman had dropped"
- "Duncan had sucked the chocolate off his Jaffa Cake"
- In the swimming pool "He liked collecting sticking plasters and lining them up on the edge of the pool"
- "Suspicion" doesn't work for me.
- "Ta for the memories" has a twist based on the title but that doesn't save the story.
- In "How I learnt to be a Real Countrywoman" the wife/mother who's moved to the country deceives her husband and kids in order to preserve a wood, and lies to her customers about her spiced buns, but there's no conflict. In this story it took me a while to understand "Then there was Triturus cristatus, or perhaps i because there were four of them.".
- "Stopping at the Light" has the elements of a more substantial story - a wife with a much older man run a trailer site. He's an Elvis impersonator. They can't have kids. They befriend a 7 year old boy who lives with his single mother. Mother and boy disappear in the night. The husband dies. The site proves as transient as the people who lived in the trailers. 4 years later, the site now a shopping center, she thinks she sees the boy again.
- None of the "Family Feeling" pieces is worth reading (though they were on radio 4).
- "A pedicure in Florence" doesn't work.
- "Summer bedding" has a plot that should work - a marriage is enlivened by an affair. However, the ending is "Our marriage did have roots, you see, ... but [my lover] helped to make it flower"
- "Smile" - the young single mother narrator works in a hotel, the baby, Donna, looked after by her single mother. She wears a SMILE badge. She's attracted by a monthly visitor who chats her up. She realises that he's her father who she last saw when she was 4. One month he takes her to his room. He sells toys. He shows her Ker-Plunk. They agree to meet next time he's in town. But he doesn't turn up. She thinks it's because he saw her mother in the shopping centre. Donna smiled "And it wasn't wind, I could tell. It was me. She smiled at me."
- "The wrong side" has a predictable ending, and a straightforward plot.
- "Making Hay" - a childless husband has just learned he has leukamia. He hasn't yet told his wife, Dolly. He's a coach driver. That day he drives women anti-bomb protestors. One of them, young enough to be his daughter, troubled, seduces him. When he gets home he tells Dolly he has something to say - then tells her about the girl.
- "Lost Boys" - the first-person wife's always admired her free-spirited mother-in-law artist, even though her husband says she lost him, etc. One day the wife leaves her kids with her on Hampstead Heath as she joyously swims, but her toddler son has gone. He's found eventually. Years later she tells her kids about their dead gran. She no longer idolises her, describing her bad points. But the wife still admires/needs her.
- "Snake Girl" - In Pakistan a middle-age ex-pat pilot marries a young local girl. She seems to continue her lively social life. When they have a late honeymoon in London she's caught at customs carrying a parcel for a friend - not shoes, but drugs. He takes the blame and loses his job. She has a child that might not be his. Yet the couple still look happy together.
- "Vacant Possession" - She's been in a relationship with a married man for 4 years. Looks like he won't leave his wife. She's an estate agent. She goes to the house of a divorcing man wh's selling up. She describes the place optimistically because that's how she sees it. He sees the bad points. He asks about her. He's looking for a flat. She shows him one, describing it depressingly. They start going out together.
- "Some day my prince will come" - a mother takes her 2 toddlers out to see the Snow White film while her husband continues the DIY which is putting a strain on their relationship. He sees in the cinema her dangerous, exciting, boyfriend from 10 years before. He's with 2 kids. She wonder how things might have been. She explains the plot to her little daughter. She wonders about following him home. When she gets home, her husband's having lager in the kitchen.
Many of the characters pepper their monologues with light jokes - for example "Last night I" had a disastrous date with a man I met on the internet. A Professional Man, he called himself. I think I prefer the amateur ones. He also said he had a good sense of humour, a sure sign, of course, that he hadn't. After the first sip of wine I knew it was doomed. A shared liking of log fires wasn't enough for a lifetime's commitment ... Nobody can call us fuddy-duddies!"
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