A Faraway Smell of Lemon - Waterstones Exclusive

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I’d had this sitting in my kindle library for I don’t know how long. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and discovered it was a short story, quite apt for the time of year, and indeed, for this extraordinary year! Rachel Joyce's new collection "A Snow Garden and Other Stories" glides through the festive season with interlinked stories which delight and surprise. From an unexpected birth at an airport full of stranded travellers, a famous son wanting to escape the madness for a normal family dinner, to a divorced father's wish to give his two little boys the one thing they really want, a white Christmas. Five stories as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be. In Trees: much to Sal’s annoyance, Oliver agrees to his elderly father’s request to bring trees. It’s New Year’s Eve, his pregnant girlfriend wants to party, but his father has decided he needs to plant twenty trees to atone. He’ll need to borrow his ex’s van, but Binny is kind, and Oliver finds himself wishing for the company and comfort of her home, what used to be his too, before he messed up his life. A quote from the forward: “We are at the centre of our own stories. And sometimes it is hard to believe that we are not at the centre of other people’s. But I love the fact that you can brush past a person with your own story so big in your mind and at the same time be a simple passer-by in someone else’s. A walk-on part.” In the foreword to this book, Joyce says, 'We are at the centre of our own stories. And sometimes it is hard to believe that we are not at the centre of other people's. But I love the fact that you can brush past a person with your own story, your own life, so big in your mind and at the same time be a simple passer-by in someone else's. A walk-on part.' This is the theme that binds these stories together - they intersect almost imperceptibly, but the link is there, cemented by one recurring image throughout the book, so the book feels whole and not discordant despite the seven divergent story lines.

On meeting the shop assistant, Binny discovers that for some people, cleaning can help them de-stress and refocus. In Christmas Day at the Airport: the reader gets all the elements of a nativity scene, but not in the conventional sense. There is indeed a very pregnant young woman (Magda) and her partner, Jo(hanna), three kings (Mrs King and her two daughters), a donkey (among other animals), (shop assistants dressed as) angels, and lambs (fluffy-toy-type). Also six Santas and a choir. Probably not a messiah, though… This was how it was, she thought. People would find one another, and sometimes it would last moments and sometimes it would last years.” This is a book of short stories centered on the time between Christmas and New Years, 7 stories with seemingly nothing in common except the picture of a girl in a red coat, an advertisement for something never named. But as each story reveals, there are sometimes connections we never know about with people we only see in passing, as strangers we never meet.A literary treasury of interconnected short stories which shared a variety of themes and emotions, a more genuine look at the holiday season than most I’ve read. These aren’t all happy-happy stories about the joys of the holiday season, which made me love this collection even more.

It has to be said that I even enjoyed the forward. In it the author describes how the characters in this book were sort of ‘left-over’ from her other books. We readers get a tiny glimpse into the author’s mind and how she views the characters portrayed in her fiction. Peripheral characters in her other books whose appearance in them was very minimal, or cut out altogether. She cared enough about their stories that she felt they needed to be told. And I’m glad she did. Beguiling . . . enthralls and moves you as it unfolds.” — People (four stars), on The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryRachel Joyce, internationally bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Perfect, delivers an unforgettable Christmas story of moving on from lost love, now available exclusively as an e-short. Here are stories of love, marriage, parenthood, loneliness, despair, angst, and compassion. The characters depicted are so vividly described that you feel you have known them for a long time.