Review:
Brief Lives: Six Fictions
by Christopher Meredith From Planet 233

Planet 231

Mary-Ann Constantine reviews
Brief Lives: Six Fictions
by Christopher Meredith

Brood

Seren, £9.99

In these half-dozen intriguing pieces Christopher Meredith evokes lives lived, many haunted by lives lost, and selves shaped by memories of previous selves. It is unstable territory, and those shapes shift, both for us as readers and for the protagonists, often caught at some moment that causes them to look back, reflect, and occasionally rethink. The time-frame of these fictions begins with the Second World War, and the first four are grounded in worlds we know, from the mid twentieth-century to the present day. The fifth opens into an alternative and futuristic reality, while the lovely final piece, a poignant homecoming, takes us to the end of time itself.

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About the author

Mary-Ann Constantine works on eighteenth-century Welsh literature and leads the Curious Travellers project at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies: http://curioustravellers.ac.uk/en/. She has published two volumes of short stories and a novel, Star‐Shot (Seren, 2015).