"A complete success" by Colette Paul (Batis Books, 2026)

Stories all set in Glasgow written over 20 years from Litro, Edinburgh Review, Manchester Review, etc.

• Rats - A couple has moved because of his job. She's unemployed with a philosophy degree. They have rats in the garden because the old widow next door scatters food for birds. She reads about socialising in new places. She realises she's "stuck with a grumpy know-it-all who is obsessed with his bike, who can't keep still for a moment, who has never had a mixed feeling". They don't want to force the widow to stop feeding the birds because it's how she's coping with grief. He tries to shoot the rats with a BB gun. They wonder whether they'll be ok. She thinks they will.
• Diddled - She passes her driving test on the 12th attempt. Her boyfriend (23) "had opinions about everything". He advises her to put a lower offer on a car advertised on Gumtree. They go to a party of his colleague - a baby and child are there. She knows nobody. He's struggling too. They leave early. She impulsively buys a car from a colleague's brother. It's rusty and dented. She feels she's been diddled. She discovers she's pregnant, though she's on the pill. Her boyfriend's unhappy. She goes for a drive (because that's what happens in films) and hits a car while trying to do a 3-point turn. She gives money to the car-owner. The story ends with "For months afterwards, as I got bigger and bigger, I saw Hakim driving around, the children lined up in the back seat, his wife in front. There was still the big dent in the passenger door. We waved at each other, until the traffic moved us away in different directions."
• Mine - The midwife visits her at home for the first time. She mentally frail. The baby's underweight. Colleagues visit, then her mother-in-law. The baby keeps crying. They stop following rules about intervals between feeds. The baby settles down.
• A complete success - Callum has dashed from LA to Glasgow because his 80 year-old mum is in ICU. They've barely talked for years because he's gay. He lives with Simon - they have a pool and a Porsche. He visits his old friend Gerry in his little room. Gerry, a confirmed bachelor, was top of the class and got nowhere. His mother was always welcoming to Callum. After beer and pizza, Callum returns to his hotel, wondering whether the point of his visit - to Gerry - had been to forgive or be forgiven.
• Days - Louise argues with her neighbour Michelle about her noisy dog. Louise's son Tom leaves for a holiday with his father and Louise's ex-friend Gwen. Louise goes for a drink with a colleague and (without knowing why) holds his hand. He, divorced, is shocked by her inappropriate behaviour. When she gets to her block she realises she's left her bag on the bus. Despair overcomes her. Michelle, divorced, lets her in. She gets through the night.
• Marrakesh - Hannah, Rosemary's student daughter, died crossing a road without looking. Rosemary's husband doesn't want to dwell on the past. She does. When she finds out that Hannah had a boyfriend, she arranges a meeting. He tells her that they'd only been going out for a few weeks. Now he was going with friends to Marrakesh to get over it. Rosemary likes him, thinks of giving him holiday money. Later, she sees him holding hands with a girl. [The twist was predictable. I liked the story though - the mother's attempt to recreate the last weeks of her daughter's life]
• Mother and son - Philip, 48, suddenly moved away to Aberdeen, leaving his mother Maureen, a young 78, alone. He quickly met Diane and lives with her. Maureen finds her bossy ("full of opinions about everything") and prematurely aged. When Maureen falls, she recovers at Philip's house. After 3 weeks there, she doesn't want to return home. She overhears Diane tell Philip to get rid of Maureen. Maureen hopes that Philip will fight back. He doesn't, so she lies to him that she has cancer.
• Ancient History - Natalie (soon to start Uni) meets Sharon while doing a summer job at Asda. Sharon gets sacked for stealing. They meet weekly to go clubbing. Nobody picks them up. Sharon plans for them to have a break in Blackpool. They save up (Natalie reluctantly). Then one week 2 older man chat them up at the club. Outside, one of them is rough with Sharon. Natalie decides not to see Sharon again. 30 years later, Natalie sees Sharon at a bus stop talking to a boy who could be her son or grandson. Their eyes meet. Had Sharon's face "registered pure aversion" or hadn't she recognised Natalie?
• Jeffrey - Elaine (62, childless) has been left by Duncan. She's kept Jeffrey, their 13 year old dog. She had got on well with her mother-in-law, who'd told her that Duncan was living with a mother of teenage kids. She's been seeing old friend Craig and is shy about the thought of sex with him. Jeffrey collapses while Elaine's walking him. He dies on her bed. Should she phone Duncan? The ending is "She lay in the darkness in that half-dreaming state where all the people who crowd your thoughts are both familiar and strange and you cannot tell where you start or they end. The moon shone quietly through the trees, giving nothing away"
• Chance - Anna's called by her son Danny to say he hit someone in self-defense who's now in a coma. Anna says that the sister of Brian, her partner, might be able to help. Danny has just returned to Tiffany (19) with whom he has a child. Anna's never met Tiffany. Anna thinks that Tiffany's tricked Danny into a relationship. Danny's father Dom (now 66) had an affair when Danny was months old, then some others, finally leaving when Danny was 9. Danny cried easily at school and lashed out. Anna hasn't contacted Dom for years. She does now, telling him to contact Danny. He has a new baby. When Danny phones Anna later he says that Dom's friends will help. He's not complimentary about Anna or old Brian. At the end she's phoned in the night "For a moment she is unable to face whatever has happened. She grips the bed, to push herself up or hold herself down, she can't tell."
• Best Friends - On her first day at uni, Iris meets Josh (a retaker) at a philosophy course. He had mental problems the year before. His parents are capitalists who wanted him to study engineering or medicine. She often sees him in his shared house. Her friends and someone from his house tell her to avoid him, but she persists. When they cuddle on his bed he avoids sex and says he has a sort-of girlfriend. They don't see each other for months. When they finally meet again he says he's off to Germany. She goes to his room and tries to have sex with him. She spends the night there without sex, clothed. [Lots of student/shared-house detail]
• The tutor - Her mum encourages her to attend creative writing classes at the local library. She's 16. She's working over summer in a cafe with 40 year-old, thrice divorced Caroline, who's looking for a man. At the classes he's hoping to meet a young poet. They're all pensioners. The tutor (his books are out of print) isn't too complementary about the contributions. She reads out a story about a boy visited his dying dad in hospital. He quizzes her on the details (she visits her grandpa in hospital). He asks her to babysit on Fridays. He doesn't pay her. His wife thinks there's something going on - though he's "sweaty, pie-faced", he's been married at least twice before. The girl says she's not going to babysit anymore. The wife accuses her of stealing a gold watch. The girl's mother suggests that the wife is punishing her because she can't punish her husband, and suggests she should write a story about it. She doesn't. Years later the girl sees a story by the tutor in an anthology, with the hospital details she's researched for him.
• Robert Wilson's last weekend - Robert, 81, has terminal cancer. He and his wife Sheila are in A&E. They married in middle age. He proposed before they'd kissed. Their son Christopher, now in Australia, had more dramatic marriages. Robert recalls significant moments in Christopher's life, then his father's death. Sheila phones Christopher, who decides to get a flight back. This worries Robert, who says "We've had a good life haven't we?" He recalls waiting at a station for her long ago. [Needs more.]
• Condition - Her neighbour Sheila was a catholic for over 30 years before becoming a Jehovah's Witness. Her other neighbour Irene has a bedbound husband and twins the narrator's age. The narrator dreams about her dead mother doing ordinary things. She's pregnant - a one-night-stand after a colleague's leaving party. Princess Diana dies. The narrator goes to the ante-natal clinic - a waiting room of pregnant women. She has an ultrasound scan.

Repeated themes include - getting in contact with friends/relatives after a gap of months/years; separated mothers who want their grown kids to be happy; best friends; short women; pregnancy. At the launch the author said she wasn't too convinced by jump-in-time endings. In general the situations and key moments are too commonplace - "Robert Wilson's last weekend" a case in point. "Favourites are "Marrakesh", "The tutor"