This is the title story of Faber’s first collection of short pieces and it is a grenade. It works like a booby trap; or, rather, like one of those aposematic creatures that draw you towards them with their beauty before you realise, too late, that their iridescence is a warning, not a lure. The way it combines dismay at the brokenness of humanity with awe at its resilience and capacity for care and love is supremely, almost ecstatically done. I first read it alone in the corner of an Edinburgh pub, steaming with people sheltering from a storm: part of me is still there.
Published in Some Rain Must Fall and Other Stories, Canongate, 1998. Winner of the Ian St James Award
A Personal Anthology 