Safe Return Doubtful

Short Stories – British Literature – Published in 2009

There’s a variety in this set of stories as to be expected with any collection. Woodward writes with a childlike way of looking at the world and there’s more to some of the stories than to others. Some are so short, and so simple, that as good as the writing is, they will not stick in the memory or allow for any reflection on their content.

It’s those with a more surreal nature that take my interest most, their dark humour appeals.

In Firemen the protagonist reacts to the self- immolation of her ex-husband on her front lawn by embarking on an affair with the fireman who puts him out.

My favourite is the first story, Rape, in which a retired couple wake up in their caravan one morning to find that it has been somehow removed from the caravan park to the middle of a vast field of flowering rape. There’s no resolution, but that image, of the caravan in a vast sea of yellow, certainly does stick in the mind.

The Golden Boys is also very good. A man is interviewee for a job at a children’s bookshop and is struck “by the odd and rather alarming thought that I hadn’t passed water for two days”. The interview itself is very amusing. He doesn’t get the job, and in the debrief the lead interviewer recognises him as a friend from primary school, with whom he used to have pissing contests.

Different readers will get different takeaways from this collection, but I enjoy Woodward describing farce, and enjoy his dry humour very much.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5