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CHANGING BABIES AND OTHER STORIES (Arrow £5.99)
The title story of this collection came to me when
I was in the changing rooms of my local swimming baths. There
was a plastic crib there. A little boy pointed to it and asked
his mother what it was for, and she replied: “It’s
for changing babies.” His face went transparent, in
that way small children’s faces do when they’re
thinking something large and unsettling. She didn’t
realize what she had said. A little while later Radio 4 asked
me to write a Christmas story, so I linked the plastic crib
to the birth of Jesus, all seen through a child’s confused
eyes. Many of my stories start this way – two disparate
images or ideas, that knock together and create a spark. Another
story, “Stopping at the lights”, came about when
I was trying to adapt my novel “Driving in the Dark”
as a film, and it had gone dead on me – I knew it too
well, it felt stale. So I took a character from it, a woman
called Shirley who lived in a trailer park near Spalding,
and gave her a story of her own. By giving her another life,
the novel itself gained energy again, its characters started
stirring and I could make them move again, into drama. Its
like shaking up the molecules.
A woman who thinks she has found the perfect man until he
becomes too mysterious for words…a rock star writing
his memoirs who can’t remember a thing…harassed
teenagers and harangued fathers…Belgian lovers, young
lovers and romance on the Costa del Sol courtesy of Sunspan
Holidays…here are fifteen brilliant stories, allsharp,
funny and painfully accurate.
“Quirky, sassy and well crafted…this is Moggach
at her best.”
(TLS)
“Just delicious.”
(New Woman) |
