What a delicately written and somber collection of stories. I immediately wanted to curl up in a blanket fort and devour all these stories. The writing is precise and evocative. I appreciate the exploration of the tenuous and resilient relationships and bonds one has to their families and community. This is the perfect winter read and I'm happy to have another collection of short stories in my arsenal to recommend.

I've never read anything from MacLaverty before, so I wasn't sure what I was getting reading into this new collection. I want to say I "enjoyed" it, but I don't think that's the right word. These stories feature loss as the main theme and that may have been too "on the nose" when compared to today's world/situation for me to truly enjoy them. Did I not become completely immersed in them because my life right now is overloaded with loss? I think so. Still, I appreciated MacLaverty's gorgeous words and felt that he did offer a tiny bit of hope in the face of death and fear.

And, frankly, I'm assuming that's why MacLaverty gravitated toward writing these. As a human on the Earth in 2022 during a pandemic, we're all immersed in this same situation and trying to find ways to grapple with it. Authors use writing to make sense of things the struggle with but to also share their own worries; I see MacLaverty doing that here.

All his stories deal with loss, but also seem to offer hope by insinuating loss is a universal concept and part of what makes us human. My favorite story is "The End of Days: Vienna 1918." In Vienna, MacLaverty draws a fictional picture of real-life artist Egon Schiele's experience with the Spanish flu in 1918. The flu killed Schiele's pregnant wife and then Egon three days later. This intimate story has him sitting at her bedside and listening to his child's heartbeat in utero as she--and the baby--dies. It's incredibly sad and moving. MacLaverty's quiet writing fits the moment perfectly; yet speaks to the communal nature of death with imagery of Schiele drawing sketches of his wife and then burning them.

If you're looking for some quiet yet powerful stories by a star of the genre, this might be the collection for you. I"m determined to give it another go and try to savor it; it'll just be when real life is less challenging.

Vivid stories that allow the reader to dive into the world of various characters struggling with challenges in their daily lives reminds us to cherish the simple things in life and the true value of family. MacLaverty's writing paints scenes in crisp detail that makes the stories truly come to life in your mind's eye. Stories are short enough to read on the go for those with little time. This was a joy to read and hard to put down.

I will read anything by Bernard MacLaverty. I love all the varied and various characters in this short story collection; the wartime widow mom, the grandfather who pretends he didn't lose the grandkids, the cleaning woman who makes a mean deathmask, etc. Each story is so unique and evocative, from Egon Schiele's family being lost to plague, to the titular story about an elderly romantic but ridiculously prolonged meetcute between neighbors Teresa and Frank who both mourn the loss of his wife.

I think my favorite was Sounds and Sweet Airs, about an elderly married couple on public transportation, or maybe I just love that I was on public transportation in Scotland myself as I read about them and got to see exactly what they were discussing!
"He nodded at the Priority Seats - the purple fabric was patterned with small, stylised figures: a green man with a white stick, a pink girl with a baby, a blue pregnant woman, an orange man with his leg in a plaster.
'What I like is that some people sat down and figured all this out,' said the woman. 'A committee. Who were kind.'
Her partner thought about this.
'But they're all temporary conditions,' he said. 'How do you show depression? Or cancer?'
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