The Redemption of Galen Pike

Carys Davies

From Shelf: Short story collection recommendations as asked for by Rachel @paceamorelibri

The seventeen stories in The Redemption of Galen Pike are about how little we ever know of other people and the unpredictable bonds that spring up between us when our worlds collide.

Winner of the 2015 International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award

Winner of the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize

Shortlisted for the 2015 Wales Book of the Year: Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2015 Edge Hill Short Story Prize

The Globe 100: The Best International Fiction of 2017

In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado jail. In the ice and snows of Siberia an office employee from Birmingham witnesses a scene that will change her life. At a jubilee celebration in a northern English town a middle-aged alderman opens his heart to Queen Victoria. A teenage daughter leaves home in search of adventure. High in the Cumbrian fells a woman seeks help from her father's enemy.

Spare, precise, charged with a prickly wit, the stories in Carys Davies's sparkling second collection remind us how little we know of the lives of others.