Review: How The Light Gets in by Clare Fisher

The exciting new book from award winning short story writer and novelist, Clare Fisher. A book of very short stories that explores the spaces between light and dark and how we find our way from one to the other. From buffering Skype chats and the truth about beards, to fried chicken shops and the things smartphones make you less likely to do when alone in a public place, Fisher paints a complex, funny and moving portrait of contemporary British life.

Review: This short story collection was excellent. It entertained me in the same way that observational comedy does, because these short stories are born of real life observations. 

The stories are grouped together in themes so you know the kind of thing to expect from each section, I really liked that about the structure of this book. They also really vary in length, some being a page and a half or two pages and some being 5 or 6 pages so you get variety as you read. 

Due to the fact that each of these stories are different and can be told from different points of view, have different protagonists or are written in a different person, this book was really great for picking up when i had a few minutes to spare and reading through a few of the stories. I also found this book really great to read in between other novels because by the time I was a few stories in, it felt like a bit of a comfort to come back to it. 

These stories are all observations on real life so they all featured people and places I could recognise, the information person in Victoria coach station, the person working in Leeds train station. Some of the book also feature different dialects and accents and I love when authors are brave enough to do that and get it right. These stories are mainly set in Leeds or London and I have lived in and around both of those cities and so I could recognise aspects of both and aspects of the characters living there to. 

Not all of these stories have a happy ending, or an ending at all but that didn't take away any of my enjoyment of this collection at all. I really enjoyed this book, it was refreshingly honest and would be a really great introduction if you are looking to get into reading short stories or to expand your short story collection. 

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US