Christopher A. Taylor

Christopher A. Taylor’s first collection short fiction addresses familiar human themes such as love, loneliness, illness and death, and does it in manner that, while not original, is still engaging and satisfying. The book is divided into two sections, the first of which includes five linked stories that form a sequence showing us the progress of the young narrator, Kit, from a state of inquisitive naivety to a point later in life where he’s acquired a degree of wisdom and maturity. In the course of these five stories he must deal with common challenges like deciding what to do with his life, the enigma of love and the death of close friends. The stories in the second section address similar subject matter involving other characters. In these we encounter a couple of young parents who can’t seem to agree with each other on much of anything, an elderly widower who’s losing his grip on reality, and a middle-aged woman whose husband has left her for a younger woman and who, happy or not, is determined to live a very long time. Throughout the book the prose is polished and expansive, filled with astute observations on human behaviour and descriptions of the natural world. Taylor’s stories are not dramatically explosive or brittle with narrative tension. Instead, they are subtle and wise and draw the reader in with their sympathetic portrayals of characters struggling to do the right thing.… (meer)