Desperate Remedies

A diverse, daring volume, Desperate Remedies brings together dazzling short fictions by Adam Elston, Shaun Levin, Mark Saba, M L Stedman, Paul Blaney and Guy Ware, edited by Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone. Adam Elston's trio of stories explores the different faces of loss and estrangement. The three stories by M L Stedman draw on the sights, smells and sounds of her native Western Australia. Mark Saba's novella of identity moves artfully between Connecticut, Minnesota, and points more distant in space and time. Paul Blaney's four stories, diverse in voice and form, combine the everyday and the fabulous, deftly negotiating dream and memory, community and the individual's quest for happiness. The first of Guy Ware's two stories is a picaresque tale of love, death and second-hand cars, the second a bitterly humorous portrait of a deeply-troubled man. Shaun Levin's virtuoso study of the poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg brings the collection to a deeply satisfying close. 'This is what short stories are meant to do: show us flamboyantly what the novel can't do and without falling into stylistic games or losing emotional resonance. Diamonds are created by compressing carbon at high temperatures; these stories seem to be created by treating language and form in much the same way. They are diamonds and should be valued as such.' Sara Maitland