Beschreibung:
By turns tender and unsettling, these stories lurk at the city’s tattered edges, where the pigeons cry for the pain of the world; where Satan’s daughter wants to die of love and the angels keep nicking God’s fags.
Long-listed for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story PrizeSongs 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.
The music of the foxes
The hyacinth girl
Barking
The Little Boy Who Lied
How the dog lost his wings
The Upstart
Pigeons in a time of famine
Flying
Dog's nightmare I
Hungry
After it Rained
Infestation
Lost
Meat
Smile
Instructions (for a game)
Angels II
Dog Finds out Where Knives Come From
Collision
Dog's Nightmare II
The Guilty
Rats
De la Viande
The Disappearing
Magpie falls in Love
The Organ Press
Slow-Motion
After Van Gogh
Birthing
The Black Wood
Gone
Hellfire
Test card F
Suffocate
Some last requests
Phoenix
Here, everything is still floating
Anti-climax (or the end of a game)
The Opposite of Falling
Piglet
Three Children are Menaced by a Nightingale (After Ernst)
At the show trial
Winter at home
Holiday