The Umbrellas of Hamelin - A GoodReads Review

Here is a review of Umbrellas from a real author, Mark Henderson.  I know he is a fan of "Waiting for Gordo" - and, thank goodness, he likes this short story collection too.  

Anyone who’s read Waiting for Gordo or Disraeli Hall will expect the fine literary style of Sue Knight’s stories to mask unsettling and thought-provoking contents; and they won’t be disappointed. Notwithstanding their variety, the stories in The Umbrellas of Hamlin are all seen from the viewpoints of lonely, isolated, troubled women trying to come to terms with their situations.

The title story typifies this theme. It’s set in an art gallery where Anita is employed but threatened with redundancy. She spends her lunchtimes in a small room beside the gallery where a continuous black-and-white video is projected on to the wall, showing women hidden under umbrellas walking through incessant rain. She is usually joined by three other women; but are they really her friends, and does the video ever stop playing, even overnight? And is it in truth displaying the continual wet weather in the world outside? What happens when Anita finds herself alone with the video display? It’s a memorable, beautifully-written tale hinting at meanings beyond its confines.

Some of the stories are more direct, though still subtle and multilayered. The Martian goes to a Party and has a Nice Day is a fine portrayal of the sense of isolation and incipient menace that afflicts emigrées (and emigrés) in all lands. One, Talky Tin, is very short and witty. Others are far from direct; The Rainy Day House moves from an annoying if potentially dangerous situation to a surreal fantasy about the protagonist’s present and projected future, revealing much about the character in so doing. Klook and Plukey takes the standpoint of a middle-aged journalist recapturing her teenage years by interviewing two clever girls from her schooldays and revealing her own location on the autism spectrum in the process. The final item in the collection, the novelette-length Till They Dropped, turns the theme of returning to childhood into a futuristic nightmare, an elusive horror story that demands to be re-read and thought about; not that it’s easy to STOP thinking about it!

This is definitely a collection for your bookshelf if you’re a lover of good literature, but lock it away from people who’re too young to handle stories that get under your skin and unsettle you.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196073058-the-umbrellas-of-hamelin

I hope they are quite funny too - some of them - and that they won't be too unsettling.  I did write much of this before I had any idea what the Bible said. I have a very different outlook now, and tend to confine my writing to blogposts and to my witnessing letters and emails.  So I guess Umbrellas will be my last book.  IF I do "inherit the earth" as Jesus promised, then I don't know if there will be a need for fiction then. But if there is, I guess there will be new stories. At the moment we only have one, the one we are living in: things have gone wrong, they need to be put right.

The photo is of our fierce and lovely Saudi cat, Whites.  He appears as Tiswas in The Martian Goes to a Party and as Talky in the eponymous Talky Tin.

He is buried in a desert garden, with flowers.  Will we see him again in the paradise earth - IF we are there that is?  Would it mean anything to Whites to see us again, or not?   Well, one day, I hope to know.  I would love to see all our cats again and our lovely Shadow, the Golden Retriever.