Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Screwtop Thompson

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
6.6
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
6.6
6.6
1 Ratings
100
90
80
70
61
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Cover artist
  
Sarah Greene

Publication date
  
October 2010

Pages
  
128

Originally published
  
October 2010

Page count
  
128

Country
  
United Kingdom

3.3/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Media type
  
Print & eBook

ISBN
  
1-4088-0997-4

Author
  
Magnus Mills

Publisher
  
Bloomsbury Publishing

Screwtop Thompson t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcR2RenwY6Iw7rsOv

Similar
  
Only When The Sun Shines Br, Once in a Blue Moon, The Maintenance of Headw, A Cruel Bird Came to the Ne, Three to See the King

Screwtop Thompson, Booker Prize-shortlisted author Magnus Mills' third collection of short stories, brings together ten short tales that "trundle gently between the ordinary, absurd and the outright surreal." Often tagged as the "bus driver novelist", Mills writes short stories described as "solid, crafted from deceptively simple sentences and concerning simple characters trying to achieve simple goals, which makes their sudden flights of fancy all the more unexpected."

Contents

The first eight stories are taken from his earlier collections, Only When the Sun Shines Brightly and Once in a Blue Moon published in 1999 and 2003 respectively.

As in his novels, all the stories are told by an unnamed narrator :

  • "Only When the Sun Shines Brightly", the narrator watches as a large plastic sheet is caught on a viaduct above a joiners workshop in strong wind.
  • "At Your Service", in which he helps his diminutive Chinese friend cut branches from a tree obscuring the light entering hid flat, but the tree is growing in a neighbours garden.
  • "The Comforter", as an architect he meets an archdeacon on the way to an interminable cathedral meeting.
  • "Hark the Herald", he spends his first night and day at a West Country guesthouse over Christmas but fails to meet the other residents.
  • "Once in a Blue Moon", he acts as negotiator in an armed siege between the police and his mother.
  • "The Good Cop" in which he is interrogated by one or possibly two identical policemen.
  • "Screwtop Thompson" in which he is a child and receives as a present "Screwtop Thompson" a toy whose head unscrews and which came in several guises. The narrator chose a policeman but received a schoolmaster....without a head.
  • "They Drive by Night" in which he is picked up as a hitch-hiker by a large lorry in which he sits in the noisy cab between the driver and his mate and attempts to make sense of the conversation.
  • "Half as Nice", Autie Pat had enjoyed four hit singles in the 1960s with an all-girl vocal group, and had married their producer, Dwight...
  • "Vacant Possession", employed to fit a cattle grid at a large, but empty country house, Noz and the narrator were staying there for three days while they completed the work; but the house feels 'creepy'...
  • "A Public Performance", In Bristol in 1970 a sixth former buys a Russian great coat but it doesn't have the desired effect as he attends a Pink Floyd concert at Colston Hall.

    • References

    Screwtop Thompson Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


    Similar Topics