Reviewed by: Keith Nixon
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Approximate word count: 25-30,000 words
Availability
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Author:
Allen Miles
lives in East Yorkshire with his family. He spends his time watching films and
listening to music. He has written a number of articles and had short stories
published.
Description:
Davy rushes
to hospital to be at the birth of his first child, but on his arrival he finds
that his wife died in the process of delivering the baby. Davy enters a
downward spiral of self-destruction.
Appraisal:
If there is
one word to describe this story it’s raw.
Within a few pages of the start Davy’s beautiful wife, the woman who pulled him
out of his self-imposed pit, is dead. He leaves the hospital carrying a bunch
of flowers and a teddy, then goes and gets drunk. By the time he wakes up the
symbols of a new life are gone, lost somewhere en-route.
Davy spends
the next couple of weeks in oblivion, avoiding everyone. He drinks himself
stupid, loses whole periods to alcohol. He doesn’t care about anyone or
anything. He just about manages to get to his wife’s funeral, but no more.
The author
absolutely puts Davy, and the reader, through the wringer. The poor sod gets
into fights, mentally and physically beating himself up, utterly down at his
loss, not even thinking about his newborn child. At the same time his family is
trying to pull him around, but he resists with his every fibre.
This is a
well written story. The emotion and sense of loss is almost visceral in nature.
The guy is a total mess, and contemplates finishing it all. Will he? Well,
you’ll need to read it for yourself, but this is a book that gets better as it
progresses.
FYI:
Some
swearing.
Format/Typo Issues:
None.
Rating: **** Four stars
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