Cockfosters
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Cockfosters is a funny, frank and forceful story collection dealing with ageing, ambition and the patterns of repetition and renewal found in long friendships and marriages. It opens irresistible new windows onto the world from Arizona to Dubai and from Moscow to Berlin. Turning both a panoramic and a zoom lens on the way we live now, these stories range through hitch-hiking in Bohemian forest-land to cresting the waves of the Aegean to the mending of hearts and the recovery of lost property at the end of the Piccadilly Line.
Helen Simpson writes with great warmth, wit and candour about the complexities of modern life, and this new collection shows why she is hailed as one of the best short story writers at work in the world today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cockfosters is the name of a station on the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground. In the titular story of this playful collection, a trip to that station to recover a pair of lost eyeglasses is a MacGuffin for two friends sharing family news and commiserating on the indignities of aging. In "Kentish Town," the choice of The Chimes over A Christmas Carol for a public reading leads to a shaggy but interesting discussion between three book group ladies about the Dickensian era and the author himself. "Kythera" is built around a recipe for something called "lemon drizzle": a mother faithfully follows instructions, drifting into a reverie about other memorable dishes and her sometimes prickly relationship with her daughter. The affecting "Cheapside" tracks the unusual friendship between a middle-aged man and an aimless teenager. "Arizona" takes a cheeky look at health declining due to age. The most substantial of the nine stories is the novella-length "Berlin," following a group of British tourists in that city. Descriptions of attractions are woven in with bits of conversation and flashbacks involving a couple whose relationship is in turmoil. This is a loose and entertaining collection.
