{"id":8165,"date":"2019-12-23T07:12:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T07:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8165"},"modified":"2019-12-24T12:29:22","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T12:29:22","slug":"sweet-home-by-wendy-erskine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8165","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/erskine.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-8166\" src=\"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/erskine-188x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"188\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/erskine-188x300.jpg 188w, http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/erskine.jpg 376w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px\" \/><\/a>Published by Picador 27 June 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>240pp, hardback, \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/affiliates.abebooks.com\/c\/99367\/77798\/2029?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.abebooks.com%2Fservlet%2FSearchResults%3Fan%3Dwendy%2520erskine%26bi%3D0%26bx%3Doff%26ds%3D30%26servlet%3DImpactRadiusAffiliateLinkEntry%26sortby%3D17%26tn%3Dsweet%2520home\">Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>First published, to acclaim, last year by Dublin\u2019s sharp-eyed Stinging Fly Press, these stories set in East Belfast are immensely readable and immediate.\u00a0 Erskine\u2019s voice is as specific and local as James Kelman\u2019s and her tales are as memorably engaging as those of William Trevor or Muriel Spark.\u00a0 In a freewheeling, deceptively simple style, she follows the thoughts and survival techniques of ordinary men and women in run-down neighbourhoods going nowhere. Her themes include loneliness, limited horizons, stoical hopelessness.\u00a0 Many of these stories have stings in their tails.<\/p>\n<p>The opening one is a triptych, featuring a girl who runs a beauty salon, the angry bloke who offers her \u2018protection\u2019 and his wife who nurses the memory of her life\u2019s one glimpse of sinful excitement. There follow stories about, for example, a widow finding an unexpected way to befriend her three Somali neighbours; two schoolgirls circling around the fact that one of them is having sex with her mother\u2019s young boyfriend; grimly repetitive life in a church caf\u00e9; a traumatized spinster schoolteacher\u2019s quiet desperation.\u00a0 In the final story, \u2018The soul has no skin\u2019, a young man in a dead-end job manages his blighted life through routine and memories, and the occasional small epiphany.<\/p>\n<p>A wretched moment in a fitness centre seems to sum up the whole collection.\u00a0 As an anxious (and by now very drunk) woman searches for an old flame, people surround her, asking: \u2018Where is it you\u2019re looking for, love?\u00a0 Where is it you\u2019re looking for, love?\u00a0 Love, what is it you\u2019re looking for?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Imaginative, poignant and compassionate.\u00a0 Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* A 2019 Notable Book<\/p>\n<p>Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n<p>Erskine\u2019s voice is as specific and local as James Kelman\u2019s and her tales are as memorably engaging as those of William Trevor or Muriel Spark.  In a freewheeling, deceptively simple style, she follows the thoughts and survival techniques of ordinary men and women in run-down neighbourhoods going nowhere [&#8230;] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8165"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8290,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8165\/revisions\/8290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}