Falling and The End of the Circus

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, August 25, 2012 Under: Book reviews

Two thoughtful short stories from Bernard Fancher available on Smashwords:

"Falling" is about the murder of a child, but with a rather different slant from most mystery/crime fiction and a more thoughtful, literary approach. Instead of the conventional “who dunnit”, the focus is on the emotions of the detective who dealt with the case as she goes to return some of the child’s belongings, once the murderer has been convicted. The facts of the case are conveyed briefly and fairly dispassionately, leaving most of the detail to your imagination – but the emotional impact is clear from the effect it has on the central character. The result (for this reader at least) is that you end up reconstructing aspects of the more conventional “who dunnit?” narrative in your head - so that by the time you’ve finished, the overall impact is closer to what you’d get from reading a much longer piece of work (which is one of the reasons why I’ve included it here).

I also enjoyed “The End of the Circus” (which, like “Falling”, is also available for free). Although very different in subject matter, it too focusses on the transient nature of existence as a source of both intense pleasure “in the moment” and sorrow/regret once that moment has gone. To that extent, the two stories could even be seen as two sides of the same coin.

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Paul Samael

Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.

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