Böcker av Laurie Brady

Each stage in a person's life comes with different thoughts and feelings about life. For instance, it's often thought that the impressionability and sometimes impulsiveness of youth gives way to the sober reflections of mature age. Poetry is the perfect medium for capturing the evocations of different stages. The 'journey' of artists may also be evident in how well they have learned their craft, whether it be in music, art or literature. This book is a selection of the author's work over a period of thirty years that reflects this two-fold journey.

Five Ordinary Men is a collection of five stories, each focusing on a different man, though the reader may think the book title is a misnomer and question whether some or all of the men are 'ordinary' at all. One man inexplicably commits a terrible crime, and relates aspects of his life trying to explain his actions both to himself and others. Another's memories of his close friend are reawakened when shown six varied photographs of their shared lives. Another wrestles with guilt and the disenchantment of his partner for not having intervened to help a stranger being attacked. Another's extraordinary shyness, or something more, affects his relationship with a shy woman. And another is impacted by self-doubt and loss of self-esteem from a student's complaint that he assaulted her. Taken together, these varied stories present a wide range of insights into the human condition.

This short novel is both a love story, and a story about life and death, age and youth, and innocence and experience. Peter Allthorpe, at the age of sixty-seven, is confronted with the likelihood of his imminent death from terminal cancer. As he copes with this reality and its medical treatment, and his own place in 'the scheme of things', he searches for what he calls 'a lucid life' and a 'quiet completeness', one he ultimately finds through his loving family.

Enter Others is a sequel to Enter Spice. The endearing characters of the novel are Toby (an Irish Wolfhound), Roxy (a Boxer), Princess (a Labrador), and Curly (a Poodle). Their 'coming out', or revealing their talents, is through a television interview with an annoying interviewer who doesn't like dogs, but the four dogs 'get the better of him'. They receive great praise from preventing the robbery attempts of two criminals, from rescuing trapped miners in a collapsed shaft in a coal mine, and from proving themselves to be extraordinary at a number of sports. When Princess is injured by bullies, Toby and Roxy seek revenge, but at the last moment they decide that doing so would make them no better than the bullies themselves. They begin to help people who are not as fortunate as others (the old, the disabled and prisoners), and learn an important lesson from Private, a homeless man who is not what he appears to be. They are approached to be superheroes in an action movie, but the venture has a comical result, and teaches the dogs another lesson. The conclusion to the 'dog trilogy' is a heart-warming ending to the growing status of dogs.

Ed Grainger returns home from his History Club meeting to find his house swarming with police. His wife Lucy has been murdered. The police identify a number of suspects. Was it Lucy's recently jilted lover, her work colleague robbed of promotion, her lawyer with whom she had a brief affair, Ed's 'unhinged' and jealous stalker and her equally as jealous and bellicose husband, or the young malefactor wanting an inheritance pay-out. Or is it someone else? All is finally revealed. The story is told with an economy of prose and an insight into the human condition.

As the title suggests, this collection of short stories focuses on a variety of unusual but not atypical emotional and life-style reactions people experience as a result of guilt, compassion, indiscretion, abuse, jealousy, fantasy, loss, sense of mission, and impending death. It provides insight into the strange nature of what it means to be human.

Slices, a title taken from Zola's description of good drama as ';a slice of life', contains sixteen stories that explore a range of often capricious and sometimes predictable responses to the challenges life presents. The stories explore the nature of memory and imagination, friendship and love, decline and loss, searching and fulfilment, and even the ridiculous. Collectively, they offer insight into the human condition, and pose challenging questions for the reader.