Product Description

Following on from the spectacular critical success of Peter Hobbs's debut novel, here is a wonderful collection of comic, heartfelt, grotesque, other-worldly and fantastical stories. A divorced mother in Florida reflects on the life that is slipping away from her. A young zoologist sees the world from the business end of his zebras. There's the story of a group of car-washers based on a south London supermarket forecourt. And Pythagoras explains just what exactly was his problem with triangles. In this thoughtful, compassionate and wildly inventive debut collection Hobbs recalls work from writers as diverse as J. G. Ballard, David Foster Wallace and Toby Litt.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357203 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 258 pages

Observer
'Lovely as a lucid dream ... [Hobbs has] confidence in spades and considerable talent to back it up.'

Financial Times
'This is a subtle and penetrating collection about lost volition, which is at times mournful, and at others angry.'

Sunday Times
'These strange realities are less disparate than they first appear, united by Hobb's deliciously sardonic sense of humour.'

Customer Reviews

A wonderful surprise
I read Peter Hobbs' Whitbread-nominated debut novel, The Short Day Dying, and found it deeply impressive, in a dark-night-of-the-19th-century-Methodist-preacher's-soul sort of way. This short story collection is equally impressive, but in completely different ways. Clever, modern, diverse, demotic and in places very funny, it showcases a wildly unpredictable new literary talent. I'm not sure who I can compare it to, as it's so original, but names like Borges, Calvino and Murakami spring to mind, and I can't think of much higher praise than that.

I could read all day my cool blue book!
This is one author I need to read more of. He is a top class writer and should not be ignored by book lovers.