Comma Modern Shorts

ISBN-10: 0954828038

ISBN-13: 978 0954828035
£7.95
Published: Mar 2007

A bank manager arrives at work one day to find himself the new employer of his ex-wife.

In the middle of a shift a divorced bus driver abandons his vehicle, to search for his estranged son.

Two sisters come to terms with their father’s disappearance with the help of a skeleton called Indira.

The stories in Ellipsis 2 explore the inherent dysfunctionality of almost all relationships, their aftermaths, and the lengths people go to to redeem them. From the ingrained resentments of Jane Rogers’ parent-child histories, to the twisted claustrophobia of Polly Clark’s couples, and the absence that travels beside each passenger in Zoe Lambert’s bus sequence – these stories demonstrate the transforming, often alienating affect a relationship can have on the individuals in it, and remind us that being next of kin isn’t always kind.

Ellipsis is a unique series presenting linked or themed sequences of short stories by three writers in each volume. All three are previously uncollected as short story authors, two of them in each issue are established (as novelists or poets), the third, in this case Zoe Lambert, is previously unpublished.

LISTEN NOW:

Jane Rogers reads 'Conception'.
Zoe Lambert reads 'That Quiet Longing'.
Zoe Lambert reads 'The Breakfast She Had'.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

JANE ROGERS is the author of several novels, including Separate Tracks (1983); Her Living Image (1984), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Ice is Singing (1987); Mr Wroe's Virgin's (1991); Promised Lands (1995), winner of the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fiction); Island (1999), and The Voyage Home (2004). She is the editor of the OUP’s Good Fiction Guide, and writes for television and radio. Her Channel 4 drama Dawn and the Candidate (1989) won a Samuel Beckett Television Award; and her adaptation of Mr Wroe's Virgins (1993), directed by Danny Boyle, was nominated for a BAFTA. She teaches on the MA writing course at Sheffield Hallam University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

POLLY CLARK has published two collections of verse, Kiss and Take Me With You (both Bloodaxe).




ZOE LAMBERT is a Manchester based writer. She has an MA in Creative Writing at UEA and she is a PhD student at MMU. Her story, 'Ramshackle' appeared in Bracket (Comma). She lectures on the creative writing MA at Bolton University and runs the live literature night Verberate.

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