The Way Out by Vicki Jarrett

"This book," says Vicki Jarrett of her new collection of short fiction, "is dedicated to all those who dream of escape." Indeed, the characters we encounter in the twenty-two stories are lonely, abstractly dissatisfied and often misunderstood by the people closest to them. They often exist in a world full of inertia, in an atmosphere as dampening as an afternoon spent in and out of the charity and pound shops of a suburban shopping centre.

Usually in these stories, small extraordinary events occur in each character's life. An old man finds a woman’s hand in a garden after a gas explosion, a barefoot woman follows someone who has stolen her shoes. There is, however, a repetitive cycle to too many of these tales. We meet a character, something happens and right at the end there is a revelation. This becomes tiresome over so many stories; there is more power in the snapshot shorts that put less effort into being complete. The brevity in a story like How to Not Get Eaten by Tigers, for example, manages to show a huge amount of depth and range of emotions over just two pages. The skill of craft here renders the need for a twist at the end successfully unnecessary. If anything, the collection might have done with slightly better curation, but readers will surely seek out Jarrett’s 2012 debut novel on the back of this reading.