Stephen Shieber is a tantalising new voice; a refreshing style seasoned with tinges of influence.

�Being Normal� appears at first to be a collection of fourteen different stories, but while reading, a pattern emerges. There is an album of mother child relationship tales, a bucket-full of broken and un-requited loves and a strong hint of mental health issues, but most of all the collection is the opposite of the title. �Being Normal� is about not being normal

The title story �Being Normal� and the first from the mother child theme, is understated. A young boy�s teenage angst is doled out in plain language with subtle inferences. Shieber gives the reader space to feel the pain of a boy who self harms by avoiding dark prose and using comic observations like �camomile tea tastes of old ladies and possibly their pee.�

In �Voices� he deals with a similar subject. Schizophrenia in a young boy suffering the pains of puberty is hinted at. The boy hears voices and attacks his mother. After incarceration and barbaric medical treatment he is released, without a map, into a grown up world. The reader is let in on how it feels to be a misfit with images of the outsider looking in on the family inside.

�The Gift� witnesses a son spending Christmas alone and the author makes this prospect sound attractive. That is until he introduces a persistent evangelist who pricks the conscience of the main character. In �The Gift� Sheiber uses his skill to describe a mother son relationship with sparse description.

�Happy Birthday Son� as the title suggests is another parent child story. It all begins in an ordinary way; a mum making a cake for her son. The son�s circumstances are withheld from the reader, but as the story unfolds little clues to his whereabouts are resolved. The ending is poignant and cleverly manoeuvred.

In �A Public Demonstration of Clairvoyance� the author uses the mother daughter relationship this time to tell a couthie tale of a girl�s visit to a clairvoyant and meeting an old biddy in the front row. The description of the old biddy is spot on and the encounter proves to be more spiritual than she intended.

Broken lives feature heavily in this collection, often with disturbing mental health issues. �Good Wife� is probably the best example of this. An abused wife prepares a dinner for her husband�s boss and his wife. She is also preparing to leave. The excellent characterisation of the abusing husband contrasted with the wife�s hopelessness stirs up strong feelings, leaving the reader reeling for justice. This is a powerful, understated story that uses short description and short sentences to pack a punch.

The most disappointing in the collection, �Don�t Try This at Home�, finds the eight year old hero struggling to referee his parent�s wasted marriage and using the make believe world of Superman as a coping strategy. I found this story the least skilled of the collection, with the child�s point of view unconvincing; would a child of eight see his father�s greying temples and sagging chin?

But it isn�t all doom and gloom. There is humour and love percolating the whole compilation.

�Sunday Lunch� is a story I finished reading and sat back and said, �I wish I had written that.� A family drama unfolds over the Sunday dinner table when a boy asks his boyfriend to marry him. The small caricatures of family members pinpoint the obvious and tighten the whole piece.

�A Little of What you Need� finds an unemployed Gary unhappy and ill. His doctor refers him to an unorthodox therapist who wraps him up in a blue blanket and gives him a cuddle. I suspect that this story sprang from a pub conversation where it was agreed that all most of us need is a big cuddle.

George Orwell once claimed that writers write to get back at folk, and I think that is true from a fun point of view not a vindictive one. I believe that �Suburbia� is a �get them back� story. Midge is a girl of low intelligence who decides to ride on a bus and chooses the wrong pair of teenagers to admire. They are middle class, and even though they are cruel to her, Midge is drawn to their culture and beauty. This is a tale of �handsome is handsome does� as my old granny would preach. The author�s quality description of Midge, without actually saying what she looks like, is inspiring.

Unrequited love is always a good theme for a story. In �The Naming of God� a German exchange tour comes to town and James falls for the group�s beauty, the blonde Andreas. James has to vie for position with the girls in the group.

The tables are turned in �Sour Milk�. Here a woman is waging war against her husband, trying to get him to leave her. She married him with expectations that failed to flower. He is determined to win her as she struggles to find the words to chip away the first flakes of his resolve.

�Business Trip� is told from the point of view of a woman whose husband has left her for a work colleague. She takes us on a sort of change curve episode where she works through denial, blaming others, blaming herself, and into a pit of confusion, before finally reaching acceptance.

The age groups featured in �Being Normal� ranges from the very old to the very young �Solitary Pursuits� begins with the aspirations of Lillian and Ernest�s retirement. Ernest suffers an after death experience and finds that, on his return to mortal earth, things are not what he expects. Lillian�s fight to hold her husband in this world is valiant and touching � their love is shown in clear simple prose. The story is the longest in collection but it is also the most complete. This is a story that holds you long after you have left the page.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading �Being Normal�, not just for its originality but for the craftsmanship of the author; like Carver he injects the exotic into everyday moments. He carves a window into ordinary people�s lives and yanks the extraordinary out of the mundane with the use of inventive imagery and fresh, apt language. He also has a knack for sketching characters with a few scratches.

The influence of his mentor Laura Hird is evident in his skill but the distinct voice belongs to Shieber. I look forward to more from him and his insightful publisher Tonto Books.

Moira McPartlin is a Scot with Irish roots. She began writing and attending creative writing classes at Strathclyde University in Glasgow in 2000 as a release from a busy career in Finance. She writes shorts stories and poetry and has had work published in Storie, The People's Friend, and The Scottish Mountaineer. In 2006 she won the Mountaineering Council for Scotland annual poetry competition and for the past three years, has regularly contributed book reviews and articles to www.laurahird.com. She resigned from a global position in Shell Oil in October 2005 to concentrate on writing her first novel Torque which was completed in July 2007. She is currently working on her second novel and developing her website. Moira has two adult sons and lives in Stirlingshire with her husband. She is a keen mountaineer and in 2006 compleated her round of Munros (Scottish mountains over 3000 feet high).