Fates of the Animals

Long-listed for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize

Songs of the drowned and a dog with wings…

“The world was a grey place once, concrete grey and striped with grey; clay against stone. The pigeons stretched out their scrawny lives and lived as creatures must. Yet they were not hateful birds. They wore their poverty like overcoats; they sat upon the highest places and drizzled the whole world with their compassion. Their souls were dignified as tarnished spoons; pigeons bore witness to the sadness and the tearing of the wind.”

By turns tender and unsettling, this book lurks at the tattered edges of the world, where Satan’s daughter wants to die of love and a woman is paralysed with fear in the 24-hours Tesco. There are jokes here too, and you cannot trust the ground beneath your feet. The angels keep stealing God’s fags and the dog is hauled up before a kangaroo court.

Fates of The Animals is a book for those who remember fairytales and the TV Test-card; those who like to feel a little uneasy; those who sometimes lie awake in the night.