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The Pre-War House and other short stories by Alison Moore (view source)
Revision as of 10:33, 22 May 2013
, 10:33, 22 May 2013no edit summary
|website=http://www.alison-moore.com/
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|summary=A superb collection of hauntingly sad short stories from the author of [[The Lighthouseby Lighthouse by Alison Moore|The Lighthouse]]. Full of tender surprises from the past.
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Alison Moore's ''Pre-War House'' is a collection of 24 short stories, only three of which are original to this collection, but most were first published in the last couple of years and, unless you are a an avid reader of ''The New Writer'' they will probably all be new to you. Moore's themes tend to concentrate on fairly dark characters, usually with a hidden secret, and more often than not dealing with the past and frequently some kind of personal loss or anguish. If you enjoyed Moore's Booker Prize shortlisted [[The Lighthouseby Lighthouse by Alison Moore|The Lighthouse]], you will find plenty to enjoy here as most of the stories have a similar hauntingly sad feel to them. With one possible exception, a very short piece called ''The Yacht Man'' which did nothing for me, the stories are beautifully judged and equally satisfying, often saving a final hit or a surprise until the end of the pieces.
The only very slight reservation I have over this book is that, as a collection rather than a set of stories intended to go together, it is probably better to dip into it and read two or three at a time rather than reading the book from cover to cover. Many, though not all, of the pieces are of similar length and construction and so after a while it becomes a little repetitive. This is compounded by the order of the stories. Whoever has complied the collection has, perhaps understandably, chosen to put stories with recurring themes next to each other - the sea for example - and until the last third of the book my sense was that it was crying out for a little more variation. The final stories though are more varied - perhaps that is their 'theme' - and as a collection, it would benefit from some of these sprinkled earlier in the book in my view.