An unusual and brilliant book of short stories. Bought it again to re-read and release.

I initially read this collection fo short stories when studying language and literature and was bowled over. Kennedy's writing and charaterisations come across as both startling and fascinating. Having re-read this, I'm still willing to grant it the 'unusual' tag, but I was not quite as wowed as I was when reading them without the benefit of having read a lot of short fiction. Two stories still stand out as really special - the one that lends this connection its title, and 'Tea and Biscuits', both dealing with 'ordinary' people thrown into sudden change by a single event.

Picked this up at the London meetup last night. Onto the TBR shelf...

An unusual and very well-written set of short stories. However, since the majority of them deal with rather negative topics (death, loneliness, domestic violence, child abuse) it was perhaps not the best book to to be my first read of 2006 - I actually had to put it aside in the middle and read something else before returning to it. Recommended, nevertheless. My favourite story was "The role of notable silence in Scottish history", which leavened the negative aspects with some surreal humour. I have another book by Kennedy to read, so I will be interested to compare and contrast the two.