23 November 2008 - Cello

There may never be a good time to launch those frail barques called small presses, but it takes a particularly brave/foolish/committed individual to launch with a single book by an unknown writer, short fiction, mostly to do with ageing.

Welcome the to the world of publishing (though not Inpress in case you wish to order) Pewter Rose Press of Nottingham (www.pewter-rose-press.com).

Pewter Rose’s first book is Cello and other stories (£7.99) by Frances Thimann. Francis is not a complete ingénue as, although it is not mentioned in Cello, she has had quite a few short stories published over many years in those few places that take them. I can remember her being in the London Magazine for sure, and she is in the new issue of Staple.

Her stories here are short, as is the book, and it felt appropriate to read them in a fit of insomnia, finishing them off on a cold bleak Sunday morning. Francis tries in her introduction to make the stories seem less bleak, to leave more positive images of ageing. But I think they are bleak, dear writer, and nothing wrong with that.

One story in particular appealed, of a painter and decorator who sits up most of the night with his seriously disabled son; a worker with love for his craft but dissed by the lawyer boyfriend of a client whose room he is painting because he is not fast enough. The lawyer – as we all are – unaware of the hidden lives of those who sell us their labour.

Better still was a cameo of a late middle-aged date which goes wrong, the woman trying too hard in her pleasure to make herself look good and failing next to the competition in the unfortunate choice of a too young, too noisy restaurant. The man knowing it was going wrong but unable to save the situation.

Good luck to Pewter Rose.