Review: A delightful surprise
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 8, 2013
As a forty-something male reader of thrillers, I'm not the obvious target audience for a book that fits into the broad category of 'romance'. But I found myself taken, indeed captivated, by this little collection of five short stories and three first-chapter excerpts from Ms Ruth's novels.'Quirky' and 'evocative' seem odd words to find together in a description of a story, but that's this author's great achievement: she succeeds in portraying utterly believable and familiar human relationships against a background of rich, earthy geographical location. We can see the mist-wreathed North Welsh hills, smell the soil and the rain.The opening story, What To Do About Clara?, is a sad and funny tale of marital faithlessness crowned with an ending as completely right as it's unexpected. Middle age comes up against youth in Over The Moon, while Celtic mysticism saturates the tragic Two Hearts, One Soul. The collection's high point, A Piece Of Cake, introduces physical danger and bawdy, almost Tom Sharpesque farce to a very British account of a man's midlife crisis. Christmas Present, the punningly titled final story, is the shortest, yet packs an astonishing range of emotion into its two pages.The excerpts are all fine introductions to Ms Ruth's three novels, confirming what the short stories have suggested: that hers is a major talent, and one well worth investing time in. Whatever your age or usual reading habits.