by Daniel Mason
I was inspired to buy this collection of short stories after reading The Winter Soldier.
Daniel Mason writes intelligently and in an approachable style, even when looking at the past and at medical detail. The stories in this book are not ultra-short, so you can get into them and I didn’t feel that any of them ended too soon. They are all set in the past, but draw on the author’s experience as a psychiatrist in examining (though not necessarily explaining) aspects of human behaviour, especially ‘abnormal’ behaviours.
These are haunting and intelligent stories, bizarre in places and yet depicting a wide range of human behaviours with great compassion.
I don’t feel able to write more just now. Perhaps I need to let the stories sink in – and perhaps I just need to re-read them at some point.
A rug and a book 