The Answer: And Other Love Stories

Rebbecca Ray’s long-awaited new book, her first since 2005, is the work of an extraordinarily accomplished writer who shows real genius in the art of the short story. The title novella, ‘The Answer’, is a masterpiece – a deeply absorbing story which is also an acute study of British society, democracy and notions of justice and fairness. Stanley Donald Parsons’ wife, Claire, is dying of throat cancer when the television explodes and sets the house on fire. Stanley walks away. ‘No one expects to die in agony at fifty-one.’ His world view is in shreds. He meets Douglas Johnson, ‘once a man of letters’, who has taken to the streets with a carrier bag which he clutches constantly to him, its contents a mystery. They form a trio with young Davey, a business graduate who has been made redundant and has slipped, slowly but surely and to his utter surprise, into homelessness. Stanley’s eyes begin to open to a very different view of the world. Hannah, a squatter of indeterminate nationality, shows Stanley how to order heroin by phoning a particular number from a particular phone box. Stan has no intention of taking drugs, but he is beginning to see how the rules of conventional society are replaced by the rules of the underworld, the homeless, the dispossessed and disenfranchised. Hannah is being pursued by Mike Brown because she has walked out of his flat with £460 and three small rocks of crack. Ken is the bigger fish who is pursuing Mike because he owes him money. Ken’s brother is DC John Saunders, who is investigating Claire’s death, the house fire and Stan’s disappearance. Although much shorter, the other stories in the collection share the same sense of purpose and containment. In the chaos of the universe, human beings will always seek structure and meaning. ‘Birdfeed’ is a poignant portrayal of an elderly widower, disabled by chronic terminal illness, who still struggles to fill the birdfeeder at ten o’clock each morning, creating a semblance of order and control. In ‘Lisa’, a lonely girl doing voluntary employment in a small company carefully constructs an alternative life for herself. And ‘We Wanted to Give You Something’ captures the steady depths of both a new and an old love, as familial values and gifts are passed from one generation to another. Each of the twelve stories, with their changing narrative voices, represents an acute observation of what it means to be human in a flawed society in which prejudice and tolerance sit in precarious balance. On the basis of this book alone, Ray deserves to be recognised as a master storyteller. — Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com