Faraway Smell of Lemon: From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

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There is much to do, much to prepare, much to mend, but it cannot be done in a day and sometimes it is better to do one small thing.” (from “A Faraway Smell of Lemon”) In The Boxing Day Ball: eighteen-year-old Maureen is surprised by a genuine invitation from the local girls. They really seem to want her along, although her mother doesn’t approve. Maureen has no idea of just how life-changing a dance in the parish hall could be. She is the award-winning writer of over 30 original afternoon plays and classic adaptations for BBC Radio 4.

As read on Radio 4, seven linked stories set in the Christmas holidays - all as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be: Description: 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. Trees: A two-fold story. First it's about an elderly father asking his young son to plant some trees. Then it becomes clear this is very closely related to the first story of the collection and we get some closure for Binny. A decent story in itself and very clever to interconnect the stories.

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Christmas at the Airport: There's a technical problem at the airport and everything is stranded and a baby is born. It's a modern version of the Christmas story with an added dose of Joyce cosiness. Maybe Joyce's forte does not lie in writing short stories, because a lot of them felt contrived, unrealistic, and abrupt. There were no explanation to fantastical things, there was no depth to the characters, and we didn't have enough time to become invested in any of the stories. 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. The store which Binny finds herself in, is one she would not normally visit. It contains cleaning products. Only cleaning products. Shelves of cleaning products. Lots and lots of cleaning products. Binny and domesticity aren’t the best of friends. This is not her type of store.

I really wasn't a fan of this one, which is sad because I usually love Rachel Joyce's story and I was looking forward for a nice warm Christmas read. Out of 7 short stories, I liked only 2 of them - and even those were not fantastically great, but just better than average. Perfect is a poignant and powerful book, rich with empathy and charged with beautiful, atmospheric writing.” —Tana French, author of In the Woods , on Perfect 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. 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.On meeting the shop assistant, Binny discovers that for some people, cleaning can help them de-stress and refocus. My favorite character of the seven stories has to be Binny, a forty-seven year old single mother. She is mentioned in both the first story, “The faraway smell of lemon” and the last one, “Trees“. Her live-in partner, Oliver, has just a few days before Christmas – left her… Beguiling . . . enthralls and moves you as it unfolds.” — People (four stars), on The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry