Intrigued? Here's the blurb...
A bereaved mother borrows her next door neighbor’s baby. An outsider builds a gingerbread house at the edge of an English village. A woman is seduced into buying special-offer babies at the supermarket. A father is reminded of his son as he watches the rescue of a group of Chilean miners. A little boy attempts to engineer a happily ever after following the death of his sister.

With psychological insight and a lightness of touch frequently found in fairy tales, Bray delves under the surface of ordinary lives to explore loss, disappointment, frustrated expectations and regret. Described as ‘not just excellent, but significant,’ by poet and critic Robert Sheppard, these dark and lyrical stories illuminate extraordinary and everyday occurrences with humanity and humour.
To put it simply, I adored Sweet Home. As with all good short story collections, each story brought something different to the mix: humour, lyricism, grief, regret, and hope. Each story has a steady grounding in suburban life, but some stories also have a touch of fairytale to them, making for a closely tied together yet utterly distinctive set of short stories. The one thing that makes all the stories similar is the strong element of truth: each story is told in a way that is achingly honest, utterly pained and unflinchingly real. Carys Bray captures exactly what family is and how dark and complex family life can sometimes be- but she does this in a way that still radiates hope.

My favourite stories in the collection have to be The Rescue (a story about a drug-addicted young man and the affect this has on his family), The Ice Baby (a story about a baby who is carved out of ice for a woman yearning for a baby) and Baby Aisle (a story commenting on 'falling' into parenthood and class divides, imagining a world where one can buy babies from the 'baby aisle' in Tesco). Each of these affected me in different ways, and they all commented on different aspects of grief, loss and parenthood, but I adored them all equally.
I would highly encourage you all to read Sweet Home, even if you've never read a short story collection before! Carys Bray is a wonderful writer and I can't wait to read her novel The Museum of You very soon <3
Buy Sweet Home here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sweet-Home-Carys-Bray/dp/1844719065
Check out Carys Bray here: http://carysbray.co.uk
Until next time :)
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