Shot

Sarah Quigley

If you would like to know how a book could be funny, tragic, dramatic, lovely, moving, sad, happy, hopeful and uplifting read this one - I was gripped from the first to the last page by this story in which sorrow turns into happiness and loss into gain.

Extract

In the kitchen cupboard are pots of mouldy jam and unopened boxes of cereal years past their expiry date. In the bathroom cabinet are tubes of toothpaste that are set solid, and old razor blades with remnants of Jimmy's chin on them. For three days Lena cleans, finishing late at night long after Moses is in bed. She sits out on the veranda, smelling of cleaning fluids that remind her of her mother, and she closes her eyes to the pink night sky.

When Jimmy gets home he stands and stares around him.
"Something's different," he says. "Have you swept or something?"

Parallels