"Desperate Remedies" by Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone (ed) (Apis Books, 2008)

An anthology of stories from writers involved with "Tales of the Decongested" - a London short-story group.

Paul Blaney - concept stories (like Adam Marek?)

• "Facsimile" (Paul Blaney) - When he and his wife arrived at an airport 20 years before to start a new life, they decided not to speak their native tongue. They left a suitcase of memorabilia there - her decision. He's hardly dreamed since. He goes to an auction of left luggage and brings home a suitcase. A painting's in it - a landscape that he likes and she doesn't. One days she burns the painting and suitcase. She doesn't know who he is. She speaks only in their native tongue. He starts painting again - "A landscape that's not home and yet looks like home"
• "Cake" (Paul Blaney) - Less than 4 pages. A woman tells her that there are 2 types of people - those who have affairs and those who don't. Her brother has frequent affairs. She tries a one-night stand as an experiment, and guiltily tells her husband. She decides she's the non-affair type and her brother isn't - "he likes to have his cake and eat it. Me, I don't even get to finish my own slice"
• "Up, up and away" (Paul Blaney) - A few people each day float up into the always clear sky and disappear. There are no deaths among these left behind. A weatherwoman arranges a park gathering where everybody holds hands for hours until it starts raining. After that, nobody floats away. People start dying again.
• "Not alone" (Paul Blaney) - A man's employed by a dead man's sister to sort out his room above a pub. He finds that he's adopting the dead man's habits. He moves into the room, wears the man's clothes. He wants to find the man's journals so that he can learn more about him, then realises that living the dead man's life is the best way to learn. At the end he thinks "Sometimes, in order to see yourself clearly, you have to move away for a short spell from where you are. It was time to head for home"

Adam Elston - Long-term regret

• "Letting go" (Adam Elston) - 4 pages. After taking his water-fearing 4 year-old son Max swimming on Sunday (a recent habit), he drives Max home, not leaving the car. He sees his ex-to-be Julie at the door, and doubts again whether they're doing the right thing.
• "An old flame" (Adam Elston) - Browsing the web, Michael (with wife and child) sees that Sara (who he's not seen for 15 years) is selling a wedding dress. He contacts her and they decide to meet at the airport - she's passing through. He'd lived with her, broken up, then had gone to her again, and had left again because she was unfaithful. He feels old, boring and fat now. When he catches sight of her at the airport, she hasn't changed. Maybe it'll work this time.
• "Kite" (Adam Elston) - David (a retired philosophy lecturer) and wife Jennifer fly a kite to commemorate the death of their only child, Daniel, who died 16 years before, aged 9, on his bike. At 5 he'd survived meningitis. The kite comes loose and blows away.

Mark Saba - an episodic family saga where a lot's going on. Interesting. I didn't need the further complication of having to guess when events happened. More time-stamps?

• "Thaddeus Olsen" (Mark Saba) - 100 pages - much the longest piece. Thaddeus (Tad) lives in the US. He has Polish and native indian roots. He likes making connections. In text which bounces back (to 1672 and Cambridge, UK) and forth in time we learn that he married Juliana, spent 5 years searching for his father Ron Olsen, wondered why his grandfather (aka Lightheart) was hung. He has uncles Dan and Frank (a plumber who drinks, who drowns in a boating accident). After not talking to Dan for 15 years, Tad tracks him down. He runs a casino, and is interested in native rights. Tad works at Staehl University in IT. There's an explosion at Staehl, and it's discovered that the university's built on ancient burial grounds. Then the provost is shot dead. At the end there's a summary and conclusion - "Tad ... will simply expire while looking at the view: the same in all directions, limitless, or horizon with no story to tell: everyone's"

M L Stedman - remembrance of lost love

• "Homesickness" (M L Stedman) - Australia. Tim and schoolfriends visit the deli/sweetshop run by sweaty, Yugoslavian Stanko, stealing sweets. Then a beautiful girl - Stanko's daughter - starts working there, and Tim falls in love. She can't speak english. Frank (son of a publican) is disrespectful to her, which angers Tim. Then Frank rapes her. The police are powerless - her word against his. Before long, Stanko and his daughter move away. Tim thumps Frank. At the end "There was this weird pain inside me somewhere, like I imagined homesickness must feel: like there was a place I could never go back to"
• "Momento Mori" (M L Stedman) - A male antique shop owner lures a schoolgirl into the back room and kills her, burying her body onsite, keeping a lock of her hair. 25 years later, the shop long sold, the body is found when the site is redeveloped. [Can't see much in this]
• "Dot and Ben" (M L Stedman) - Ben saw Dotty Dot about 20 times over 50 years, first when a boy, fishing with his father on the beach where she wandered, a bit mad. She told him that a Ben used to love her. Benedict. She asked if he loved anybody, and warned him about love. When his father died, he visited the beach again. He married Jess, became a doctor in a city, had a son, Dan. When Dan was 18, Jess died in a traffic accident and Dan was seriously brain-damaged. Ben moved near the beach with Dan, working in the hospital. He takes Dan to the beach and they meet Dot. Later, Dot is brought into hospital. He looks up her records and finds a love letter from Ben to Dot - a photo too. She dies.

Guy Ware - a mix of large scale life-sized plot with lots of small-scale chance events. Good dialogue

• "The long run" (Guy Ware) - London. Young Steve's looking after his ill, old father's dealership. Old Ray arrives. We get both their PoVs as they size each other up. Ray test drives a Daimler with Steve (who can't drive) beside him. He drives all night - Cambridge, M25, Portsmouth. They pick up Joy, a young, confused girl who says she's going to be an architect. They breakfast in Bexhill. Ray buys Steve's company and drives away. [works for me!]
• "Asking for it" (Guy Ware) - Max (married with 2 young kids) works for the PM (Tony Blair), organising events often at short notice. His wife Eileen (who works at A&E) had once punched him and broken his nose. He finds himself in a pub with a Felicity, a young, new reporter. A stranger alludes that she's black. Max gives her a lift home, returns to the pub as if looking for trouble, then goes home. On New Year's Eve he's looking after the kids while Eileen's working. He pops out to the pub and ends up in A&E. Eileen's had enough of his self-harming tactics.

Shaun Levin - episodic CNF

• "Specimens of desperate attempts: sketches from the life and death of Isaac Rosenberg" (Shaun Levin) - "Some of us, all we get is birth and death. Others get at least one more moment like this. When the arms of eternity open just for us ... The Slade, South Africa, London, the war. Never happy, never at ease, never welcome. But he didn't know this"

"Five Survive" by Holly Jackson

6 17/18 year olds are in an RV on the way to a week of camping. Red (female) and Arthur are in the early stages of friendship. Red and Maddy are lifelong friends. Maddy and Oliver are siblings. Raynor is driving. Oliver's her boyfriend. Simon is there too. A sniper starts shooting at them, bursting the types and hitting the fuel tank. Oliver takes control.

Red's dad's a drinker. Her mother (police) died - shot in an abandoned power station. Oliver and Maddy's mother is a deputy DA currently prosecuting a gangster leader, Frank, for murder. Perhaps the sniper wants to know who the key eye-witness is.

The sniper leaves them a walkie-talkie. He says that one of them has a secret. Once that person comes forward, the others will be saved. Oliver admits that when a man accosted Raynor, he hit him and he died. Raynor tells Oliver that it wasn't a random man. It was a man she was having an affair with.

They think up escape plans. They fail. 2 curious people who live nearby ask if they want help. They're shot dead. The sniper seems to know what's going on inside the RV. Oliver gets the others to look for a hidden microphone, then suspects that one of them is a wired-up mole. "Lord of the Flies" is mentioned.

Then Red says that she's the key witness, that she's had several meetings with Oliver's mother. Should she give herself up to the sniper? They anonymously vote on it. Though the majority say no, she walks out. She's not shot. Oliver decides that since Red is immune she's guilty. He gets Maddy to dress in Red's clothes so she can go out and drive away in the dead couple's vehicle. She goes out and is shot in the leg - wounded but not dead. Just as Red manages to contact someone on a walkie-talkie channel, Arthur takes the walkie-talkie from her and smashes it. He's Frank's son. He wants to know who's framing his father. Red says that Oliver's mother is paying her to be a witness. Arthur says she's been exchanging info with the gang for 10 years. She made Red think that Frank's gang killed her mother. Red realises that Oliver's mother killed her mother (who'd realised what Oliver's mother was up to), and that Maddy had known what had happened.

The cops arrive. Red is shot by the police. She imagines talking to her mother. Oliver dies.

It ends with a police transcript and a news item about the murder of Oliver's mother. Arthur sent Red a letter saying that Arthur had killed her. Red survives. Arthur gives her money to pay the health fees.

The reviews say this is YA. I like "the flat tyre unpuddles off the ground" (when it's pumped up) and "her head undone" (of a woman who'd been shot in the head) but not "into two unequal halves"

Other reviews

• missknown (A small group of people trapped and only the secret of one of them can set them free isn’t a new concept. It’s always a fun story for the drama and the usual fast pace. It’s a type of story that will keep you on the edge of your seat. And Five Survive was no different. Although of all the stories I’ve seen with this plot, this one is my least favourite. ... In the end, they all had some sort of secret, except ones were insignificant compared to others. This also meant the characters didn’t equally share the suspects’ pool, which defies one of the core purposes of the mystery. ... But the ending… It wasn’t satisfying. There’s a lot of injustice behind the secret the sniper is after, and while it’s resolved, it’s not resolved satisfyingly. I felt there was so much wrongness that wasn’t righted. And so I much prefer the journey even if it wasn’t perfect. But the ending… It wasn’t satisfying. There’s a lot of injustice behind the secret the sniper is after, and while it’s resolved, it’s not resolved satisfyingly. I felt there was so much wrongness that wasn’t righted. And so I much prefer the journey even if it wasn’t perfect.)
• thewrittenvoiceofis (I wasn’t fully invested until 60 percent of the book. ... It drags in places (those early 60 percent pages could have been edited to fewer escape descriptions), and not all six characters bring much to the table, and honestly, Jackson could have gone and been wilder with the twist. Until then, I thought Holly Jackson’s new venture into thriller was rather lackluster.)
• frappesandfiction (Holly Jackson knows how to write a page-turner for sure. However, my main issues with the book were the flat characters and lack of realism. ... There were a lot of awkwardly-worded sentences, as well as odd sentence placement and scene transitions.)

"Table for One" by Emma Gannon

An audio book.

London-based Willow and Dom, together over 10 years, have a successful start-up company, Scatterbox. She and his parents want her to get pregnant. One of her friends, Pen, is a mid-wife and another, Alice, has miscarried. Karla, Willow's 50 year old aunt with her owncompany, brought her up when her mother left, and adopted her. Willow writes the Website copy, and misses doing journalism. Dom neglects to mention her at a prize-giving ceremony, and she's not upset. [Both of these actions seem unlikely to me]. She's offered a job in New York by Elaine, and a one-off assignment that attracts her - she researches by looking up a beautiful, young influencer, Naz, who advocates living single. Willow interviews her.

Chapters about the main timeline alternate with chapters that deal with the past - festivals, a New York holiday with Karla, etc. Her first interview for Elaine had been at a Zoo where she'd been told about butterflies' lifecycles - how the caterpillar pupates, has a meltdown, how the more the butterfly has to struggle from the pupa, the stronger it will be - it will die if a human helps it out.

Dom suddenly tells her that he's moving to New York for business and personal reasons - he wants to go alone. He wants to buy her out. [She doesn't complain or suffer though they've been together a decade]. She goes to Eastbourne to live with Karla, who discovers a breast lump. Willow starts using Tumbler, unsuccessfully. Friends tell her that Dom treated her badly. Naz invites her to a women-only event. She enjoys relaxing among clever, entertaining people. She spends a day with Naz, shopping and swimming. Naz might not be as confident as she looks - there's a sick-bucket in her room etc. She hints to Willow about her self-doubts. Elaine wants Willow to write an exposé. Willow's tempted, though she can also see the positive effects that Naz has on woman. Naz has a mental breakdown when it's revealed on single media that she has a girlfriend. Willow doesn't publish the article.

Alice is pregnant. Pen has an open relationship. Lola calls off her marriage, staying in the relationship. Naz stays with Willow and Karla for a night or 2. Karla dies - she was always happy alone. She had endless capacity for love.

A year later, Willow is at an airport bound for 6 months holiday, starting in Vietnam. She discovers that Dom has sold his company for £25 million. She happens to meet Naz with an older woman. Willow and Naz thank each other. Naz reminds Willow of her mother. Willow has learnt how to love herself. She starts writing her new piece called "Table for one".

No. The set pieces are all too long. I don't believe Willow's reaction to the break-up. It's unclear to me why the Willow+Dom phase is included - the rest of the book is independent of it, and is too schematic, the characters providing a menu of options for the depressingly passive Willow to learn/choose from.

Other reviews

• Goodreads
• lookonthewriteside (I wanted a bit more self-reflection from Willow and a bit more page-time for a few of the secondary characters—Carla, Pen, I’m looking at you. The second half of the novel was over a bit too quickly and I felt there was room to dig a little deeper.)
• republicofwords (The beats are all very familiar, the situations as you’d expect, as if there’s a great self-actualisation novel generator that takes all the tropes of the sub-genre—a little bit romcom, a little bit self-help—shakes them up and throws them back out in a neat list. It’s all very hopeful and inspiring but, like the best fast food, it was great going in, utterly forgotten straight afterwards.)

"The No-Show" by Beth O'Leary

An audio book.

Valentine's Day. Siobhan is waiting in London for a man she meets for sex monthly. She's 28, a Life Coach. She shares a Dublin flat with Fiona who she met 10 years before at Drama School. She's had no real dates for 3 years, not since Cilian. He doesn't turn up. Next day he does, apologizing. Richard is one of Siobhan's clients. He'd had trouble at work. She likes him.

It's tree surgeon Miranda's first morning with a new team led by Jamie. AJ (who has a reputation, and a cute dog) asks her to bed. She has a lunchtime date with boyfriend Carter. He doesn't turn up. He apologies next day. He takes her to his Alzheimer mother's house. The mother calls her Siobhan

Jane works in a Winchester charity shop. She invented a boyfriend so colleagues wouldn't fuss. For an engagement party Joseph, a friend, offered to pretend to be her boyfriend. He turns up a day late. They used to work in the same London company but he doesn't know that. She left under a cloud, not telling her father the truth.

All 3 women are dating the same man, Joseph. He keeps his past fuzzy. We follow the 3 women for weeks. Siobhan thinks she's pregnant. It's a false alarm but she has a bit of a breakdown. Miranda has twin girls staying with her. Jane by chance meets an ex-colleague, Lou, who tells her that her ex-boss is trying to find her. They all begin to suspect that Joseph has other lovers. He seems to want to be just friends with Siobhan.

Miranda discovers that AJ likes and respects her. Jane makes a friend, Aggie. She decides to leave the shop.

By coincidence, Miranda, Jane, Siobhan and Joseph are all at the same New Years Party. Jane's ex-boss is there. It's Richard. He's on a harrassment charge. He offers her money. He's given her money before. She's stronger now. She tells Joseph about Richard.

Siobhan dies in a motorcycle accident. Joseph sees it and thinks Richard is to blame by distracting her.

It ends with Joseph's PoV. Jane has moved in with him. They used to be a 2-person bookclub. Now she sees is basement library.

I realised, reading the reviews, that I had the chronology wrong. I think I'd have done better with a physical copy of the book

Other reviews

• book-for-thought (there were points in the novel where the three women definitely felt like characters instead of real people, boxed in their key distinguishing traits and not moving away from them ... Their relationships with Joseph were also annoying at times. Yes, he’s charming but he also doesn’t always behave fairly towards them and all three women certainly put up with a lot of stuff without questions. ... I felt some steam was lost towards the middle, which bored me slightly.)
• smartbitchestrashybooks (O’Leary writes about women who are healing from abuse, both work and personal, exceptionally well. Each of the women resonated with me in how they exhibited a different common dynamic of the past couple of years—Siobhan’s overwork causes her to burnout, Jane is rebuilding her sense of self after a toxic work situation, and Miranda is learning to trust her strength and beauty, because she isn’t sure if she’s posh enough for Joseph ... I was fascinated by the way Joseph genuinely seems like the perfect boyfriend for each of these women. ... The No-Show has a tendency to spread itself too thin. There are quite a few characters across three cities, and I didn’t feel like I got to sink into their lives completely.)
• thiswriterreads (Here’s a recap of the Valentine’s Days, since it can be hard to keep track of once we learn the truth late in the book: 2015: Siobhan is stood up because Joseph was over thirty minutes late ... ; 2016: Siobhan is now the one who is late, thanks to Richard, and is struck by the motorbike and dies while Joseph watches. ... ; 2018: Miranda is stood up because Joseph was still grieving Siobhan’s traumatic death and drank to forget, then passed out; 2019: Jane is stood up because Joseph ... starts drinking until he passes out, then realizes he’s missed the engagement party. Miranda makes him promise that he needs to wait a whole year before dating anyone because he needs to heal from the tragic loss of Siobhan; 2020: Joseph goes to Jane and confesses his love for her; 2021: Joseph and Jane are living together at his mom’s house, have a Zoom memorial call for Siobhan.)

"The wheel and other stories" by Geoffrey Kirkness (Cambridge Mutual Publications, 2020)

• Letters from the men - 5 letters through the ages: by a castle-owner, a monk, a viking, Casanova, and a person on a spaceship who has all these letters (which were written without the expectation of being read). [Several unfaithful women. An interesting structure.].
• The wheel - a novella set in Cambridge decades ago. Brian arrives from a comprehensive school to start Eng Lit. He's sporty. He has a one-night stand with Danni, a Roedean girl, who's more interested in drama than her studies. She's in a relationship with John from St. John's though they both know it won't last. John sometimes visits Leni at a massage parlour - she's a suicidal cutter with a brother Marcus who deals in drugs. Sam got a 3rd, went to RADA and at 34 is back in Cambridge. We learn of Brian that "Little did he know that before him were years of striving and loneliness". Brian changes courses. John, Danni and Brian go punting and sunbathe naked with the dons. They have a threesome. After a joint, Brian "found himself suddenly out of control, unable to stop himself becoming serious". John attends an astrology lecture delivered by an astrophysicist. Brian, Danni and 2 girls have a foursome. Leni comes out of the police station and heads for the countryside. At the end, 2 years later, "we leave him there, Brian, his moment; whether he was on the outside or the inside only he would know". [A "La Ronde" romp]
• Juliet - First-person. She's a sex-worker. She stabbed an actor because he'd gone to her to do research. [Doesn't work for me]
• The present tense - John, a Cambridge philology student, goes to Rautken island, off Finland, to study their dialect, which is all but unwritten. He meets Carl, who's been studying it for years and has theories. The locals clam up when they think their language is being studied. Carl says he should meet the shunned (autistic?) daughter of a multiple murderer because she uses the dialect. The islanders had killed her father. One sleety day he goes to her isolated cottage. She speaks a strange language that he somehow understands. He tries to seduce the plain girl. He wants to marry her. He visits again. Carl has left him a note - "Be very careful, there is no present tense." Her father kills him. [I like the plot and much of the story]
• The mine - Bob is visiting the narrator, whose wife is Turkish. He has a long dream (recurrent?) about being a cave-dweller, by a silver-mine. He rouses the workers in Greek. It's the time of Plato. In the dream his wife played his mother. [I didn't see much in this]
• The photograph - Driving through Northern Italy, Ian, 18, is given an old, erotic photo of an actress by a shopkeeper. It makes old women he talks to suddenly appear young to him. He tracks down the old actress near Rome and has sex with her, living with her for a week, wanting to marry her. She thinks he's only after her money. He shows her the photo and explains. He suddenly becomes old. He drives back to the shop and returns the photo [I like the Dorian Gray-like plot. I was hoping for more of a twist/moral at the end. Maybe the idea is that once you confess your love, reality takes over from fantasy?]
• The prison - an Englishman in a Spanish-speaking country is in a prison by the sea. The wife of the prisoner in the next cell gives the guard an envelope that she thinks contains a permit for her husband's release. The guard reads it and throws it away, saying he doesn't believe it. Later the prisoner picks the letter up. It gave permission to the guard to do whatever he wanted with the wife. [4 pages. A good twist. It would have had a bigger effect if we'd known more about the guard]
• The federation of Necromancers versus the ghosts' unions - The dead come to narrator's door campaigning for their right to return in various ways. [4 pages. Several jokes.]
• Beyond Dorchester - [Over 25 pages - "The New Zealand count in his Citroen deux chevaux and his sixty-year-old plus fours goes hunting for young classicists and enjoys sqashing sibilants in Polish ... A grief strikes him mistier than the blackest sloe-bush in the Europe-hating hedgerows, deeper than our memory or understanding ... Just blush red, mutter about trout and trot off home, your head wrapped in paper. Your eyes buttons, one ITV one BBC. Within a decade they will all be gone. ... all rivers commute to the sea. The sea unfussy as death" etc. I'm not convinced.]

There's an impressive variety of styles and forms. All the pieces had at least something of interest. I noted some phrases -

• "But I don't believe in sewing up my own eyes to make a tapestry" (p.3. I like this, and it suits the character)
• "Aggressively unaware of her large breasts under her heavy cloak, she dipped her hand, half swan head half adder, into her 'pigeonhole' and took out what? An invitation?" (p.54. In this book adjectives and comparisons increase when women appear)
• "Her breasts so beautiful, so very white, the nipples dark, a world of their own yet somehow eloquent, denying as they invited" (p.62. Brian's PoV, so ok)
• "He felt so much fear on the inside that his external appearance became superficially relaxed" (p.76. Where else would fear be but inside? Where else would appearance be but outside?)
• In Cambridge "'offing the prof' was not such a blood sport as in American universities" (p.67. Useful to know!)
• "Depression is a curious disease, it has its own stages and laws. The only way to win is to pull it up by the throat and force it to become naked unhappiness" (p.90. I sometimes wondered in this book whether a quotable phrase fitted its context or the person saying/thinking it)
• "I suppose seeing a moon in dreams is like seeing the engine climb into the driving seat of your car" (p.175. I like the conceit)
• "Her eyes spoke of a weary task to perform, and in the depths of them he read a mixture of dread and heat which tailed off into an intense white light burning into him" (p.188. I bet her eyes weren't really like this)

Other reviews

• Amazon reviews

"folkish" by Kym Deyn (Nine Arches Press, 2026)

Poems from Oxford Poetry, Propel Magazine, etc. "If Polari was a kind of Birdsong" begins with "The landscape is gay because I am./ The moor's crushed heather curves, the wide/ woke ocean with her singing tides will upset/ some of you, I'm sure. The pink mushroom/ with infinite sexes, the bees like tiny vibrators", which I can handle, but much else is beyond me. When I feel I understand a piece (think I know what it's aiming to do, etc) I often don't think much of it - a sign that I'm not on the poet's wavelength. An example is p.46.

I like parts more than wholes - e.g. "The language of birds holds a dozen-thousand minutiae, irreplicable in human speech. To have mastery of it is to know the taste of each kind of sky, to angle wings for an updraft, to be liquid as a kingfisher" (p.52). My favourites are "Petrified Forest, Redcar" and "How the Braag Did The Trick"

"By all means" by Tim Love (Nine Arches Press, 2012)

Short stories from Staple, Under the Radar, etc

• Olga, December '76 - A man gets a call from a troubled ex. He dashes to meet her in London. She hasn't changed. He has. He sleeps with her before he has second thoughts about alternative lifestyles, and creeps away. Years later, he builds his kids a tree-house.
• The Big Climb - A father's on a caravan holiday with his little son. The mother disappeared a few months before. Today they're going on a long walk. Will she return? The father says they'll have to wait and see.
• Late - A pair of men, old mates, search in vain for the grave of an mutual friend as night falls. They're nearly locked in the graveyard. The married narrator is worried that he'll be late home.
• Prague '86 - A man visiting his friend in Prague meets his friend's aunt, who lived through some troubled times
• Doors and windows - London. Mark's male partner walks out on him. He recalls summer holidays in Wales when a boy, his parents breaking up, the people who'd helped him through life. Bill Thompson had introduced him to the gay scene. Mark goes to Bill's old London address. A young man lives there. He says he'll look for Bill's address and meet Mark later. Mark decides instead to get a train for Wales.
• Method of Loci - The narrator on a Moroccan train starts writing. He chats to a woman opposite. They're involved in the same conference. His paper is entitled "Transgendered Infiltration of Fractal Grammars"
• Dreams - The narrator had a mental crises while driving, deciding whether to accept a new job. Now he's going through the contents of his loft, watching old video clips and BBC retrospectives.
• Definitions - A person in transition goes swimming in a hotel pool. It gets tricky
• Fractals - A writer tries to write a story. He goes for a walk, hoping to gather material. Nowadays his story drafts shrink to Flash. Sometimes they expand out again.

Lots of details and self-conscious narrators. Many analogies. It's "Reality Effect" vs "Meta", "Purple prose" vs "sad, grey lives". Often a person journeys in an attempt to make sense of something, hoping there are lessons in the past. In several of the stories ("The Big Climb", "Late", etc) one of the significant characters is absent. All the stories (except "Olga, December '76" which fast-forwards years at the end) have narrational durations of at most a day (often just hours) punctuated by flashbacks.

More details are on litrefsbyallmeans.blogspot.com