Intelligent and enjoyable - definitely worth a look
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Essentially a literary fiction collection, there's a good mix of styles, voices, themes and characters within this collection and the quality is such that it's impossible to separate established published writers from newbies. It's not the type of collection that you can sit down and read in one sitting - I found myself dipping in and out of the book over the last few months - but that didn't prevent me from enjoying it.
Of the 34 stories, my favourites were "Why I Feel Sorry for the Chickens" by Andrew Lloyd-Jones, a humorous look at a disastrous trolley dash undertaken by one of the narrator's co-employees in a thermometer and pressure guage factory and "Naughty" by Kate Darby which examines sexual desire between two characters - Jay and Cam. There wasn't really any story that I disliked - some of the shorter character examination pieces weren't my cup of tea, but they are intelligently written and have a point to them.
Because the Tales of the DeCongested reading event is one where stories are read out loud to an audience, I think that you get the maximum benefit of the collection by reading them out to yourself or others as there is certainly a performance element to some of the pieces, e.g. "Johann Tossick and his Case of Socks" by Justine Shaw or "The Pike" by Jonathan Attrill.
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