A Shock by Keith Ridgeway

Keith Ridgeway is apparently a writer in the 'modernist tradition in Irish Fiction' (whatever that means), but this is not like any other Irish writing I have come across in my (admittedly limited) experience. There are no farms, no endless cups of tea, no mean auld Mammys driving all fifteen children to drink/drugs/atheism, and not even a mention of mashed potatoes (well, I don't remember any anyway).

This is a collection of short stories about a group of people living their lives in suburban London. They have their jobs and when they come home they potter about. There is a lot of pottering about doing all the stuff people do at home - including the private stuff that they wouldn't want you looking in on - but there you are peering into their lives as though you have a set of binoculars trained on their windows. The writing style is conspiratorial and you keep watching and watching until you are lulled by the normalness of it all and then you get this sense of foreboding that things might be taking a bit of a turn....

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