The characters in David Constantine's fourth collection are often delicately caught in moments of defiance. Disregarding their age, their family, or the prevailing political winds, they show us a way of marking out a space for resistance and taking an honest delight in it. Witness Alphonse – having broken out of an old people's home, changed his name, and fled the country – now pedalling down the length of the Rhone, despite knowing he has barely six months to live. Or the clergyman who chooses to spend Christmas Eve – and the last few hours in his job – in a frozen, derelict school, dancing a wild jig with a vagrant called Goat. Key to these characters' defiance is the power of fiction, the act of holding real life at arm's length and simply telling a story – be it of the future they might claim for themselves, or the imagined lives of others. Like them, Constantine's bewitching, finely-wrought stories give us permission to escape, they allow us to side-step the inexorable traffic of our lives, and beseech us to take possession of the moment.
About the Author
David Constantine is a novelist, poet and translator of Hoelderlin, Goethe, Faust and Brecht. He is also an editor of "OxfordPoets", an imprint of Carcanet Press, and of the magazine "Modern Poetry in Translation". Born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1944, he is a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, where he now lives. He has published half a dozen volumes of poems, all with Bloodaxe Books, including "Something for the Ghosts" (2002) and "Collected Poems" (2004). His acclaimed collection of short fiction, "Under the Dam", was published by Comma Press in 2005.
Reviews
"Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form" – The Reader
"The excellence of the collection is fractal: the whole book is excellent, and every story is excellent, and every paragraph is excellent, and every sentence is excellent. And, unlike some literary fiction, it's effortless to read" – The Independent on Sunday
"Masterful... pregnant with fluctuating interpretations and concealed motives" – The Guardian
"Peculiarity is wrapped into the heart of David Constantine's collection; in its characters and their fragile lives" – The Financial Times
"A. S. Byatt has described reading a previous collection of Constantine's short fiction as akin to experiencing 'a series of short shocks of (agreeably envious) pleasure'. Tea at the Midland shows the author to be on equally sparkling form again" – The TLS
"This is a superb collection of stories: Constantine's writing is rare today, unafraid to be rich and allusive and unashamedly moving" – The Independent
"Restrained, delicate, a small, perfectly shaped moment in which nothing monumental seems to happen – only it does, really. Stylistically, it is elegant, nothing is superfluous" – The Scotsman
"Spellbinding" – The Irish Times
"An exacting wordsmith, David Constantine is always in complete control of his material, every sentence exquisitely wrought to convey exactly the mood he intends" – The Good Book Guide
"Touched at times with humour and infused with compassion, these complex, nuanced stories speak repeatedly of lives lived in some form of exile, yet manage to keep in play the possibility that exile is not, contrary to appearances, our true condition" – New Welsh Review
"Constantine's stories are not pre-prepared in any sense; he starts anew every time. Inspired by that image or specific instance, his work has a feeling of wholeness and growth. Natural phenomena are deeply expressive" – The Irish Post
