Reviews

• Excellent short stories

  Quite a short review for this book really. It's more of the same from Robert Shearman and when I say that I mean that in a good way. It's more of the same diverting, interesting, unique and engaging short stories just like in his previous tome 'Tiny Deaths' which I have bought as a present for people because I wanted people to read these stories. I really wish that I had heard Mr. Shearmans radio 4 plays as if they are as compelling as this collection of stories, they must be a good listen, sadly I don't think they are commercially available as audio. Highly recommended and a book that I'm sure I will return to.

• Another collection of gems from Rob Shearman

  Following up his first collection of short stories, Rob Shearman shifted the focus from short stories about death to this time stories about love. The focus on love as opposed to death may lead you to think that his second book has a lighter tone, and while occasionally true, much of it still has that razor-sharp dark humour and creativity that defines much of his work. Love is something that's usually associated with positivity and goodness, but as Shearman demonstrates through these stories, there is room for a more cynical take. After all, love is strong enough that a lack of it can cause us just as much pain as it can joy, and also strong enough that it can make us behave and act in ways that we otherwise wouldn't. Shearman's creativity is in full swing once again, as over the course of the book we witness the devil become a successful author of romantic novels, a pig in the Garden of Eden compose the first ever love song, a world where couples in love physically give each other their hearts in a Tupperware box, a couple who go away for a dirty weekend discover a whole new species, and one woman having to endure a strange grieving process when the entire country of Luxembourg disappears overnight and taking her husband with it. Perhaps the darkest, and certainly the story with the biggest gut-punch in the book, sees a man in a relationship with a woman who's allergic to his happiness. It sounds quirky and unusual, but when you stop to think about the implications of it for more than a minute, it becomes morbid very quickly, and may even read as an allegory for an abusive relationship. If you're familiar with or a fan of any of Shearman's other work, with Love Songs For The Shy & Cynical, you'll almost certainly enjoy this too and of course I wholeheartedly recommend it. It didn't quite surpass Tiny Deaths, his first short story collection, in my own opinion but even so, few authors offer the same kind of experience as this.

• It's a little bit me, it's a little bit you

  Fabulous. A storyteller of magnitude and skill. Delightful set of stories of love and romance of sorts. A fantastic opener with a sideways look at doing a job that rubs the wrong way from your desire. Worth reading twice it's so good.

• Outstanding

  I know, short stories aren't for everyone. But this simply excellent book is a collection of rare gems, written with wit and sparkle - despite their often dark nature. Two thumbs up from me, only sorry there wasn't a Kindle edition and I had to buy paper.

• He just wasn't comfortable having body organs lying around the breakfast things

  Robert Shearman has won awards galore, including a world fantasy writing award and for playwriting and television series' (inc. Dr Who), and this is his second collection of short stories. It is very appealing, off-beat and quirky, these stories are set just out of plain view in a world that resembles, but superficially, our own. They are love songs stretched out of context, involving death and sex as often as love and they challenge the reader, sometimes discomfortingly. They might involve the ghost of a cat or a man who substitutes his wife's heart for that of a pig, or indeed, involve a pig that sings a love song. They are hauntingly good in parts, and fearsomely awful in others. My favourite is probably the most conventional, Love in a Time of Sharing where an increasingly disenchanted time-share salesman finally revolts from his loathsome job. In one story a strange species of furry creatures with wings becomes roadkill but manages to give birth at the last gasp, and in another Luxemburg disappears only to pop up somewhere in the South Pacific. In some stories there is a lovely torque to the logic that can delight. In George Clooney's Moustache there is a neat U-turn on an abduction scenario; in Jolly Roger a cruise turns sinister for a man who is angry with Jesus, his cabin steward, who has a spooky way with the bath towels. The stories are quite short which makes them all the more addictive (I'll just read one more before I turn out the light).

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