Virtual Book Tour Dates: 7/28/14 – 8/4/14
Genres: Short Stories, Literary Fiction
Blurb:
A painting is a suspected forgery and an hotel disappears; people try to make sense of strange events but cannot unravel them.
Excerpt:
Tenements were like giants’ houses but
really they were buildings that managed to cram entire families next to
each other on landings. I had to walk along those concrete balconies,
counting out the front doors. However, the only way up was by steep
stone stairs. Old men slumped in corners of the landings, drunk, asleep,
passed out. More stray dogs snarled, interrupted in their staircase
naps.
Bits of graffiti told that G+N, true.
Billy is a…(crossed out.) Everyone had to walk past this every day until
it became lost in history, which would take about five years.
“Coming back from school, they wait for
me on the stairs, the lads, at times, and go to grab my school beret and
swipe my satchel,” Marianne said, “But I always fight them off, and
they’ve stopped doing it now, really.” Perhaps they had seen her going
off in full Everton glory and came to respect her as a fellow supporter.
Winning the scholarship and getting to grammar school was where she had
betrayed them and they had to make it obvious. No one was supposed to
escape, leaving them kicked aside.
Wind gusted up from the river and from
the third balcony, looking across, large ships glided past, a hint of
black and white glamour. Seagulls yapped and perched on anywhere high
enough to satisfy their pride. The Mersey knitted them together; most of
the men here worked on the docks and warehouses. Old women, wrapped in
fringed black shawls, leant over the balcony, looking at the large
concrete patch below them.
What should have been a lawn or
playground was a decaying potholed area where some boys played a
desultory game of football. Their shouts echoed up. The women had faces
like pug dogs, riddled with lines, greying hair scraped back into a bun.
They gave me a grunted “hello” and went back to surveying their echoing
kingdom.
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About The Author:
Pat Jourdan, born in
Liverpool, studied painting at Liverpool College of Art, with several
exhibitions held since. Winner of several prizes, including the Molly
Keane Short Story Award, second in the Michael McLaverty Short Story
Award, Quality Women’s Fiction and widely published in magazines. Editor
of The Lantern Review. “Little-known but gifted poet of the Liverpool
School” – Ian Mc Ewan,in “Saturday.”
Novels “Finding Out” and
“A Small Inheritance” and short story collections “Average Sunday
Afternoon,” “Rainy Pavements,” and “The Fog Index.” Also seven poetry
collections.
Author Links:
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