The stories are interspersed by very short pieces, character studies and monologues, which reveal a life and mindset in a few paragraphs. Their impact is haunting and out of all proportion to their length. ‘Mischa,’ a Russian cosmonaut, returns to earth to find that ”gravity pains him” – the space mission has been a failure, but it has changed him forever as he discovers when he steps lightly round the streets of St. Petersburg. ‘Agnes’ owns a period painting , badly damaged, which she keeps because it reminds her of her daughter. ‘Threadbare’ pokes fun at possession gatherers in a delightfully unexpected way. In ‘Bitsy,’ a disapproving husband monologues about his wife, but what he sees and what the reader sees are two entirely different things, a masterly sleight-of-hand by Rose. ‘Gilbert’ is a gay man whose monologue consists entirely of a series of frantic questions to an unknown visitor, and reveal a desperate need to be seen to be having a wonderful time and a touching desperation to get a response from the unimpressed visitor.

Gay men feature in several stories in the collection. In ‘Sergei,’ a gay encounter is heavy with portent and the promise of a truly spectacular climax – and then reduced to the ludicrous by an unfortunate turn of phrase. The savagely sad ‘Raging Ladies’ is peopled with drag queens all desperately having a good time and cascading wit and diva-ness over everyone within earshot. But for Paul, tired of medication and tired of the scene, the big kick is the destructive hurricane approaching the city. Both he and the hurricane are the raging ladies of the title. Gentler and even sadder is ‘I’m A Stranger Here Myself.’ A gay gambler is visiting America. Here he luxuriates in the rich and exotic hotel he stays in, so different from the ”desert” of routine he lives in at home. He’s a risk taker, likes taking bends on his motorbike at outrageous speeds, almost as though he had a death wish. He takes risks with money too since he is not a wise gambler. The one thing he will not take a chance on is the smouldering and willing young men he meets on his travels. He longs for them, dreams about them, but never drops his guard. His sensuality is confined to soft and wonderful hotel furnishings. And you begin to see why he describes his life and home as a desert.

Rose displays a sly and wicked humour in the story ‘Pornographers At Lunch.’ In a book full of impressive stories, this one is outstanding. Three pornographers meet for lunch. Juan Carlos has a laptop with his latest porn finds on it. Elizabeth finds the leather clad beauties “tired” and is actually more sensually involved with the food and drink being served. So is everyone, except for Juan Carlos. The tropes of the porn scene are all here, and mightily unerotic they are around that sunny luncheon table, no matter how Juan Carlos enthuses. A pedal bin and a shampoo bottle provide the laugh aloud parts of this story. The message is clearly that porn is jaded and boring, wonderfully illustrated by an unimpressed waiter who declares his love for his wife.

The fantasies of men also come under attack in ‘Camille.’ A man visits Paris but is unimpressed by Parisian women unimpressed by him. He also dislikes the Paris whores, whose imperfectipns are too obvious to him – and besides, they want paying. He reviews his past loves and it is soon clear that this man will never find a women who meets his exacting requirements. But then he does, and what’s more, displays a devotion no one would have thought him capable of. What a punchline there is to this story.

The most tender piece in the collection is ‘A Beautiful Restoration’. A former palace in Poland, now a hotel, is being restored. The housekeeper there, prematurely aged, has suffered through the drab Communist years and her life has been devoid of colour and light and warmth. A visit by an Italian opera singer to the hotel awakens in her a longing for these things and through the medium of a bouquet of flowers and a pile of washing, Rose poignantly shows the housekeeper’s reawakening which runs in parallel to the restoration of old beauties to the house.

‘The Shape Of her Head’ is about a trainee hairdresser who gives head massages to clients in the salon. The girl makes desultory conversation with one lady and the difficulty of making uncontroversial remarks is beautifully conveyed in the face of the lady’s opinionated, judgemental and tactless chatter. The girll’s attention drifts to schoolboys passing by, one of them a boy she had a crush on when at school. But she has been left behind by her old friends as they are all staying on at school to make more spectacular careers than hers. It turns out that the girl was, after all, paying attention to what her client was saying. Her fingers on the lady’s skull almost develop a life of their own in one of those marvellous Rose moments when inner rage and misery almost but not quite erupt.

In the rest of the stories, the reader meets a cynical magician, a pair of lovers trapped in a toxic wasteland, a pompous skating instructor, a discarded painting, a pair of mothers gone to see their children in a fashion show – all display a sense of gathering momentum and most have a killer punchline. Rose just gets better and better.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.