Product Description

What links a café in Antarctica, a factory for producing electronic tracking tags and a casino where gamblers can wager their shoes? They're among the multiple venues where award-winning writer Tania Hershman sets her unique tales in this spellbinding debut collection. Fleeing from tragedy, a bereaved mother opens a cafe on the road to the South Pole. A town which has always suffered extreme cold enjoys sudden warmth. A stranger starts plaiting a young woman's hair. A rabbi comes face to face with an angel in a car park. An elderly woman explains to her young carer what pregnancy used to mean before science took over. A middle-aged housewife overcomes a fear of technology to save her best friend. A desperate childless woman resorts to extreme measures to adopt. A young man's potential is instantly snuffed out by Nature's whims. A lonely widow bakes cakes in the shape of test tubes and DNA.A number of these stories are inspired by articles from science magazines, taking fact as their starting points and wondering what might happen if . . .? In these surreal, lyrical stories, many of which are only a few pages long, Tania Hershman allows her imagination free reign, as her characters navigate through love, death, friendship, spirituality, mental illness and the havoc wreaked by the weather.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #303209 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
…an author dripping with talent, this is as good as modern reading gets. (New Scientist Christmas Books Special: Best of 2008 )

This collection exemplifies everything that is best about the short story. With succinctness rarely seen in the work of someone new to fiction, Hershman extracts the very essence of a moment to reveal the poignant fragility of human relationships… each story is so different from the next that you will be tempted to read ‘just one more’, until you find you have read the whole book in one sitting. Hershman writes in a variety of style that are sometimes whimsical and playful, other times wry and edgy, so that you never tire of her narrative voice. (Dominique Wilson Wet Ink )

Review
Incredibly lush, intelligent, seductive, Hershman’s collection reveals a marvelously varied repertoire of narrative styles and subjects that are so compelling, so deliciously readable, it’s impossible to finish one story without quickly beginning another. There is a double-genius at work here, a writer who is capable of seamlessly marrying the religion of physics to the twin sciences of loss and desire. Hershman possesses the rare scientific eye and accomplished literary sensibility of Bradbury, the wry clarity of Atwood. This collection is telescopic and rich, it puts down roots, it doesn’t leave you. (Sunshine O’Donnell, author of ‘Open Me’ )

About the Author
Meeting Tania Hershman, many people find it hard to believe that she studied Maths and Physics rather than English at University. But Tania is just as happy discussing electrons, protons, quarks and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as she is chatting about the latest short story collections being published. When she began her University studies, Tania assumed she was heading towards a career in the lab. But, after proving to be hopeless at experiments – and finding reporting for the college newspaper far more enjoyable – it became clear that writing was Tania's true calling. Science journalism was the natural next step. After moving to Jerusalem, Israel, in 1994, “just as peace looked like it was breaking out”, for 13 years she reported on Israeli scientific and technological innovations for English-language journals in Israel, the UK and America. “Everyone I met was excited and optimistic; they thought they were going to change the world,” Tania says. “Some, like ICQ, who invented instant messaging, actually did!”However interesting she found her work, journalism wasn't the kind of writing Tania really wanted to be doing. Over time, she returned to her first love, fiction, and began writing short stories and attending fiction workshops in the US and the UK. In 2003, she returned to England to study for an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and realised that there was no looking back. The selection of her short story, The White Road, for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 gave Tania the impetus she needed to take herself seriously as a writer. She set up a writing group in Israel, joined several online communities, and began writing regularly and submitting her stories to competitions, literary journals and websites. After a number of her stories were published, and she won and was shortlisted for several contests, Tania decided the time had come to change her business card from “journalist” to “writer”. She printed new cards, redesigned her website, and began to do, full-time, what she had wanted to do since she was 6. “I couldn't be happier,” she says.After her first collection was accepted by Salt Publishing, Tania looked around for possible opportunities for reviews, and saw to her dismay that short story collections get far less attention than novels. She decided to do her part to redress the balance. In November 2007 she founded The Short Review, a website dedicated to reviewing short story collections and anthologies. The positive response to her iniative was overwhelming, and Tania now has thirty reviewers covering as wide variety of genres as possible for the monthly publication. “I am not trying to sell books, just attempting to help people find something to read – and making sure that short stories are part of that ‘something'!” The site gets hundreds of hits every week.Minmizing harm to the environment is very important to Tania and her partner, James, who try to live a “green” lifestyle. Tania was concerned about the impact of her own collection, so she is thrilled to be partnering with Eco-Libris, a company who offer readers a way to “balance out” the destruction of the trees to make the books on their shelves. Eco-Libris will plant a tree for every copy of Tania's book that is printed. Tania's newest love is flash fiction – very short stories, under 500 words – and she is now working on her second collection, of short short stories.

Customer Reviews

A treat to read
This slim volume with its stunningly photographed cover contains stories with colour, life, passion, precision and pathos. The shortest is just half a page but it packs a terrific punch. You could read the whole collection in one sitting but I recommend taking your time, allowing the stories to sink in, get under your skin and sing.

Fascinating interplay between humanity and science
This collection of short stories takes as its theme the edgy and sometimes difficult relationship between humanity and science. There is a great deal of energy about the stories, as well as a strong and distinctive voice. Not all main characters are sympathetic but, then again, they're not meant to be - and each one does have a gripping issue to raise or an arresting tale to tell.

My favourites amongst the collection tended to be the longer stories where both character and situation were allowed to live and breathe a little - during some of the shorter/one page tales, I personally felt that interesting scenarios were being unnecessarily curtailed and I would have liked to have known more. It would certainly be fascinating to see some of those very short pieces given a longer life - this author knows how to create character and story, and it's therefore a shame not to use that talent to the full.

That said, it's a very worthwhile collection - special mention has to go to the title story, The White Road (a tale of loss, grief and decisive action - and my personal favourite in the book), Heavy Bones (flash fiction about the start of a marriage that really works and shows not all stories have to be sad), On A Roll (where sacrifice brings about hope and the possibility of a new life), and Express (where the mysteries of language uncover a forgotten history).

Definitely a thought-provoking read.

Science and fiction melded
There's a great idea behind this collection of short stories. Many of them take an item from New Scientist magazine - a hot snippet of science - and use that as the starting point for a short story. These stories often aren't what you'd describe as science fiction, they're just great short fiction inspired by a scientific theme.

Not every story appealed to me - but I've never yet read a story collection where one did, even from great masters of the genre like Gene Wolfe. I really don't understand why short story collections aren't more popular in our soundbite age. They're a great way to get some fiction in bite-sized chunks. Sometimes - and this is certainly true of Tania Hershman's work - they're poetic.

A great collection.