Shena Mackay

A wonderful collection of short stories by the doyenne of the form, a writer known for 'the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights'- Guardian. Shena Mackay came to fame aged 20 when she published her first book, written in her teens, with Andre Deutsch. At times darkly surreal and funny, always deft, and highly memorable, her fiction has attracted a legion of fierce admirers ranging from Iris Murdoch to Julie Burchill, Ian Hamilton to Rachel Cooke.

An Advent Calendar opens on the sights and sounds of an ambulance arriving at the scene after a man chops his finger off at a butcher shop. A hapless customer, John, who takes home an order of minced beef to his ailing Uncle Cecil, is overwhelmed with guilt and horror when the butcher arrives at his door looking for the missing finger. John, who is out of work, his wife Marguerite, and their two young children move in with Uncle Cecil and the adults struggle to find equilibrium and satisfaction in lives filled with longing and unfulfilled dreams. Marguerite has a brief affair, an escape from the seemingly relentless poverty and boredom of her life. Her lover, Aaron, arrives at her back door one night after everyone has gone to bed. Marguerite's young daughter, Emily, walks into the kitchen where they sit drinking and smoking. Uncle Cecil lives in squalor with a goat out back. John's sister, Elizabeth, a schoolteacher, befriends a troubled student, Joy, who is seduced while baby-sitting for a middle-aged poet. The story takes place during the twenty-four days of December that are depicted in dime-store advent calendars. It culminates at Christmas, not exactly with a Hollywood ending that rights all wrongs, but with redemption and absolution, as is sufficient unto the season.

The story of twin brothers and their families whose lives are inexorably intertwined, filled with guilty secrets.

"A would-be biographer visits a home for retired clowns. An ex-pat returns from Hong Kong to find his family and London disconcertingly changed. An elderly woman, once an intrepid journalist, is paralysed with apprehension at the thought of meeting the daughter of her dearest friend. A budding writer is taken on as amanuensis by a famous woman novelist, with disastrous results..."--BOOK JACKET.