Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This is a short story collection of horrible wonderful interconnected tales, full of charming and terrifying weirdness, set in and around the crumbling Paradise block of flats. The protagonist of one story will always appear as a (sometimes very minor) background character in another, linking them nicely. The level of surreality varies across the stories, as does the narrative voice, but I wouldn’t say that I preferred one technique over another, and it worked cohesively. This felt like a writer having a lot of fun, and I loved it.

The title refers to the decaying, distinctly non-paradisiacal block of flats occupied by many of the characters in this weird, disturbing and sometimes brilliant collection. Alice Ash's writing is so textured and absorbing that you can absolutely see and hear and even sniff what she's describing all the time. I felt like I was trapped in some bizarre, 1970s British domestic horror in a very good way (I've also just now realised that no one seems to have any modern technology or at rather it's not used in such a way that is meant to identify characters as super-contemporary). I loved the little world she created, full of decaying old department stores, and people selling coffins over landlines, and going on disappointing holidays. The stories really do convincingly touch on poverty, and dependency, but at an angle which makes them supremely weird and compelling, and devoid (mostly) of cliche.

The standouts for me were Planes, Timespeak, Ball, Bad Elastic and Sea God. If I had to isolate what they had in common, it would be that they all possessed an emotional depth that lifted them above the stylistic experimentation of the other stories in the collection. Everyone in 'Paradise Block' is pretty venal and/or sad, but there was an urgency to the situations - a sense of impending danger or real stakes - in these particular tales that made them really absorbing and memorable.

While the other stories were good, I sometimes found them a little obfuscating stylistically - as in, I'm not sure what's going on and not sure whether that's intentional - or a little broad in their characterisation. Otherwise, this collection is very exciting and I'm looking forward to reading her novel.

Paradise Block is the debut collection of connected short stories by author Alice Ash.

When her two-book deal with Serpent Tail was announced (the second book a novel planned for 2023), Ash said, regarding this collection, “I wanted to play with the boundaries of reality, with the uneven nature of perspective and place, as well as with the form of the short story itself.”

The stories certainly provide an uneven and unsettling perspective. They are, in one sense, rooted in a very down-to-earth place, a tower block called Paradise Block in the fictitious town of Clutter, itself near to the more upmarket coastal town of Plum Regis, where the residents of Paradise Block can only aspire to live.

"[Paradise Block] was built very cheaply, with windows that will fall out, and damp and mould as thick as fur, a cat ghost creature that would slink into each and every flat."

Yet in another sense many of the stories are surreal, people living on the margins and somehow dislocated from everyday life, looking at experience with a bizarre slant.

Is this (from the opening story Eggs.) some form of supernatural phenomenon or just unrecognised varicose veins?

"But that evening, I find something strange. It is just a cluster of lines behind the knee. At first, I think that Little David has used a felt tip to draw on me while I was sleeping, but the lines are very fine and faint, and they won’t disappear when I rub them with spit. They are light green, like the threads in the wrist, and when it has been a few days, I realise that this is something from inside, something coming to the surface. I tell the lines to go away, go back inside, but soon they get darker, and then they come undone; they begin to spool around to the front of the calf. Now the threads appear like a ball of wool, a huge cloud underneath the knee. The cloud is a dark purple scribble with floating green threads, swirling up and into the thigh."

It’s a word where pupils for show-and-tell don’t bring pictures of their puppy but rather:

"‘Now, Jake, do you have your Show and Tell?’ she says, looking around again, but Jake is already shuffling to the front of the class, holding the lump under his jacket. Benny sees white fur with pointed little claws on the end of some twisted yellowish toes, ears that are half formed and show the way into the dog’s head. Some of the class scream when Jake drops the lump of dog carelessly on Miss Mitchelmore’s desk, in the spot where Benny’s fleet of planes had been moments before.

‘This one came out dead,’ he says."

Part of the book’s pleasure results from how images (eggs, varicose veins etc) and also characters repeat between the stories - I’m not sure it’s really a particularly different slant on the short-story form, but it is done effectively.

A favourite story of mine was Doctor Sharpe about a woman convinced her doctor was infatuated with her, and desperate for an excuse for an appointment:

"I needed to make myself sick, and fast. I wondered if it was possible to infect yourself with life-threatening diseases and found lots of places on the internet that said you could and gave lists of foods and drinks and products that would do just that. So I did an online shop for almost all of the things on the list (apart from green olives and dark chocolate because these are foods that I absolutely hate and will only resort to after all other options have closed to me). I also ordered five packets of cigarettes. When the order arrived the young delivery boy looked very concerned. He was red in the face.

‘Don’t worry,’ i said, ‘i’m trying to get cancer.’ He walked away quite slowly."

And the author’s website - http://www.aliceash.com/ showcases an accompanying shortfilm, written by the directed by Laura Brown. (https://vimeo.com/121004531)

Overall, a fascinating collection and an author to watch.

Thanks to the publishers via Netgalley for the ARC.

Alice Ash is a Brighton-based writer and maker of short films (see aliceash.com). The opening story in this collection (“Eggs”) was long listed for the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize in 2019. Her writing has featured in several magazines and she has signed a two book deal with Serpents Tail, the first book being this collection of interlinked short stories. She has said:

”When writing my collection, I wanted to play with the boundaries of reality, with the uneven nature of perspective and place, as well as with the form of the short story itself. “

The stories here definitely play with the boundaries of reality and the author’s filmmaking background shows clearly in some of the takes on “perspective and place”. I am not sure that much has been done that plays with the form of the short story.

Paradise Block is a block of flats and the stories centre on people who either live in one of the flats or who have connections to people there. The opening story, already mentioned, gives us a young girls boiling eggs to feed her family in a flat that has been burned out. It is an immediate clue that the lives described are going to be largely difficult lives lived in difficult financial circumstances. As well as spending time in Paradise Block, we visit nearby Clutter, Plum Regis, especially the department store there, Upper Skein and the Lilybank River.

There is something unsettling about the stories. I think this is caused by the way the author is “playing with the uneven nature of perspective and place”. It is “our world” but it is being examined from a slightly different direction to normal.

The stories are linked by a number of recurring characters. It pays to note people’s distinguishing characteristics because several people make reappearances not by name but by reference (their shoes or their freckles, for example). As the book progresses, the reader starts to make links and recognise people as they turn up in other people’s stories.

I wasn’t sure about the first few stories, but I did find that the further into the book I got, the more I became interested in the stories. I am not sure whether that is because I got to know several of the people or because the stories themselves are more interesting. “Black, Dark Hill” for example is quite surreal and is immediately followed by Sea God which is sad (as are several of the stories, if truth be told).

I found this an interesting book to read, something a bit different in terms of style and perspective.