Open Up
Stories
-
- $36.99
-
- $36.99
Publisher Description
“This brilliant, funny, unsettling book is a work of deep psychological realism and a philosophical inquiry at the same time. Thomas Morris is a master of the contemporary short story, and the stories in this collection are his best yet.” —SALLY ROONEY author of INTERMEZZO
Strikingly original and wonderfully tender, Open Up is a vivid exploration of the thrills, challenges, and aches of contemporary life. These five stories pulse with a dark strangeness: a boy’s first football match is charged with secret magic and complicated by his family situation; a young man’s vacation with his partner comes under threat from a dark visitor; a family of seahorses faces growing pains and grief as they fight to come of age and understand their place in the world. Deeply felt and richly rewarding, Open Up is a gorgeous and penetrating examination of human vulnerability, filled with magic and wonder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Welsh writer Morris (We Don't Know What We're Doing) puts a singular spin on familiar themes such as parental abandonment and the search for meaning in this staggering collection. In "Wales," the crushing and sharply funny opener, superstitious 10-year-old Gareth attends a soccer match between Wales and Northern Ireland with his deadbeat dad, who left him and his mom three months earlier. Gareth clings to the belief that if Wales wins the game, he and his mom will never see the repo man again. The long and surprisingly moving "Aberkarid" centers on a family of male seahorses whose lovesick father promises them that their absent mother will one day return. The narrator, one of the sons, rejects their uncle Nol's advice to live like he does, mating with as many "fillies" as possible and never giving a thought to the thousands of seahorses he's birthed. Later stories explore young men's passivity and resentments, as in "Little Wizard," about a short fellow who's convinced himself he's a victim of "unconscious bias" at his low-paying office job. In "Passenger," a Dubliner on vacation in Croatia with his Irish girlfriend defers to her and struggles with sharing about his impoverished background in the Welsh town of Caerphilly. The depressed narrator of "Birthday Teeth," also from Caerphilly, identifies as a vampire and hopes to find happiness by having his teeth filed into fangs. No matter how abject the characters, their hope feels well earned thanks to Morris's impressive ability to plumb their emotional depths. This is unforgettable.
