cover image Collected Stories

Collected Stories

Leslie Norris. Seren Books, $21.95 (236pp) ISBN 978-1-85411-133-3

These short stories by Welsh craftsman Norris (perhaps better known as a poet) almost all center on encounters that lead to epiphanies. Since they are brief, there are a lot of them, and when read all together they become as schematic as mystery novels: the reader might not know whodunit but does know that this information will be revealed on the last page. However, all the stories are equally well-wrought and lightly written. In ""Sliding,"" a schoolboy recalls how a classmate had cracked and chafed skin from the cold. The narrator of ""Three Shots for Charlie Benson"" remembers a sweet if not terribly bright boy on the local football team for whom he performs one final act of kindness after discovering his dead body. On his 14th birthday, James's father scares him by promising to reveal a dark secret among the men in his family, but then turns it into a joke in ""The Kingfisher."" This collection brings together two earlier books--Sliding and The Girl from Cardigan--and three new stories, but American readers unversed in Welsh literature could have benefited from an introduction and information about the author other than the two paragraphs noting that, after many years teaching at American universities, he is returning to Wales at the age of 75. Although many of these details are picturesque in a sort of How Green Was My Valley way (lots of verdant fields, lots of earnest young boys), only a few shed light directly on Welsh culture. (Sept.)