Product Description

Most of these vivid and unsettling stories are rooted in apparently everyday lives and situations, but suddenly become surreal or disturbing - reading them feels sometimes as though you're walking along in the real world and suddenly step off an edge into a void, where rules of gravity and normality have disappeared but life carries on ...They're full of Woodward's trademark mix of humour, pathos, dysfunctional families and disappointed lives, as well as dazzling moments of illumination, perfect imagery, beautiful writing and intimations of mortality (in "A Ford Mondeo" and "Gardening").But this time there's infidelity ("Pangea Ultima", "Milk", "Cleopatra", "Firemen"), curdled sex ("Firemen" again, and "Chicken Pox"), strange jobs in kitchens and sandwich bars which involve betrayal and revenge (as in "Hygiene" or "Strawberries"). And the title comes from "Rape" where a caravan (a nice Fleetwood Marauder) seems to have been lifted from its regular berth at Glenmore Caravan Park in the middle of the night to land it and its occupants in a field in the middle of nowhere...which leads to unaccustomed and violent fantasies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403500 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

The Scotsman
`Gerard Woodward has one very desirable quality: a distinctive voice.'

Daily Telegraph
`At his best, Gerard Woodward is one of our finest writers... he writes with subtlety and skill'.

The Observer
`Gerard Woodward's first collection of short stories brims with confidence'

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
Like another Amazon reviewer, I bought this on the basis of a newspaper reviewer recommendation. Most of the stories, although professionally written and mildly enjoyable, seem to end with me thinking 'Is that it?'. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, or perhaps it's newspaper critics being generous to known authors, but I like some reward in the way of conclusion for seeing a story through to the end. You get the feeling the author is tossing these stories off without expending too much effort. OK but forgettable.

Caravan Thieves
I really enjoyed the previous Gerard Woodward books but am somewhat disappointed in this book of short stories - quite peculiar and inconclusive tales.

Caravan Thieves
This book had a good review in the newspaper, but I was disappointed as the stories seemed to be rambling and did not finish with any conclusion or punch line. For instance, in the first story you never discovered how, why or by whom the caravan was stolen and this was typical of the other stories