From a rat’s eye view of the London blitz to a cadaver with a complaint about the size of her coffin, this collection of short stories brings us into a comically surreal world that will leave you questioning your ability to tell up from down.
What the characters in these stories have in common is their passage through a moment of crisis: the teacher who must face down an aggressive student in the award winning Interactive Classroom; Shep, the sheep-turned sheep dog, who wants to turn back the clock and become a sheep again; or the paranoid David Vincent, who is convinced the office he works in is being infiltrated by alien imposters who are now coming for him.
In terms of genre, the stories range from the post-modernist science fiction of 6 Hits from the Safe Zone, The Mission and Debt, Death and Deletion to the more macabre dark humour of Guest in the Attic and The Undertaker’s Complaint. Historical fiction is also included, with an alcoholic Churchill burping his way to greatness. Some works place comedy to the fore, such as The Interactive Sexual Attraction Device.
If we tire of fiction, travel writing brings us back to the real world, in which the author offers his unique perspective on China, India and Lebanon. The Boots anthology finishes with samples from the author’s novels, converted into short stories.
All the pieces in this collection have been published in various locations and are now brought together in one collection.
Take your psyche for a walk with Boots.
