It takes a particular skill to write short stories and this author absolutely has it, if this collection is anything to go by. A collection to savour and take your time with, to allow each story space to breathe and work its magic. The characters face challenges and we get a sense of their humanity through the wonderful writing. Exquisite.

An incredible collection of short stories, from the opening pages, you can tell that this will be thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking. ‘Wales’ was a particular highlight for me, and I look forward to reading more from this author, he is extremely talented at the short story form.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Completely brilliant.

I requested this book because Morris named one of Granta's 20 best young British Novelists. This is his second collection of short stories. It is the first I’ve read, but I will be picking up his first ASAP.

Open Up is comprised of five short stories set in and around Wales. The thread throughout the collection is manhood. Morris shows impressive range, the stories vary from domestic to surreal to gothic to humorous (sometimes within a single story). Brutal, terribly sad, full of heart.

Morris considers men and boys growing up, grappling with loneliness, finding their place. I can’t think of any other writer telling these stories. I personally have not read a book which considers the struggles of being a young man in this time so artfully. Open Up does not rely on stereotypes or tropes so often seen when telling these types of stories, it is so thoughtful, sensitive and brutal. Morris writes with a light touch (in this way it reminds me of the excellent Send Nudes by Saba Sams) and rich with intimacy, softness and insight.

I have pressed this book into the hands of friends and cannot wait to discuss with others when it reaches a wider audience. Great pick for book clubs!

Pick this book up if: you enjoy Max Porter.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a stunning collection of beautifully written short stories, and every single one was incredible. I can absolutely see why Morris has been dubbed one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, I am now a dedicated fan. I'll be on the lookout for more of his work!

Short stories are kind of hard to review without giving away too much of the plot but I will say, there is one in particular about a certain species of fish that truly left me in awe- I'd highly recommend reading this just for that one Story! No spoilers, though. You'll have to experience the mystery for yourself!

Thomas Morris’ new collection of five melancholic short stories, all set in South Wales (land and sea), are a lyrical and emotional study of masculinity and boyhood.

Loneliness and identity are ever present here, showing the introspective nature of five men seeking connection from parents, from lovers, from the world.

Morris is showing us a type of masculinity that will resonate with many, but isn’t necessarily prevalent in media. Morris’ protagonists are sensitive, volatile, fearful- each character is given a wealth of history and neurosis, and the result is that your connection and empathy for them is deep felt.

My favourite was ‘Aberkariad’, one of the longest stories in the collection, which tells the story of a family of seahorses awaiting the return of the mother, who abandoned their father after he fell pregnant. Unexpectedly funny, but equally poignant and examining fatherhood, masculinity and love, you’ll be caught off guard by how emotional you can be about a seahorse!

A collection of stories by award-winning, Welsh author and editor, Thomas Morris, recently singled out by Granta on their list of the best, young British writers. In one of these stories a character’s glimpsed reading Shirley Jackson, and there’s something of Jackson in Morris’s approach - although Jackson’s invoked more in spirit than in style. But like Jackson, Morris’s writing blurs the boundaries between the gothic and the domestic, intent on exposing the everyday “horrors” lurking in relationships or in seemingly-ordinary families. Morris frequently mines aspects of his own life: his passion for football; and growing up in a comparatively poor, single-parent household. His protagonists are all male - even the ones who aren’t human - often reeling from the fallout of fracturing or fractured families, in which mothers or fathers are absent or dead or too emotionally stunted to count.

In his opening story “Wales” a young boy Gareth is waiting for his estranged father to take him to a football match, caught up in magical thinking Gareth pins his hope on Wales winning the match. A victory he believes could save him and his mother from the repo man. It’s a likeable piece, if somewhat slight, but its emphasis on isolation, anxiety and vulnerability sets the stage for the stories that follow. “Little Wizard” revolves around Big Mike, a lonely, resentful office worker, who attributes his lack of success with women to the fact that he's short. He plugs the gaps in his life with fast food and snacks from the local supermarket, worries about making his mortgage payments and dreams of getting a girlfriend. At first a sympathetic character, things take a turn when Mike’s attitudes to women suggest he may be an incel in the making.

In “Passenger” Geraint’s on holiday with Niamh in Croatia but their relationship is floundering and so is he, sparking a crisis that morphs into the stuff of nightmares. “Birthday Teeth” deals with Glynn who lives with his agoraphobic mother. He’s unemployed, apparently adrift but finds meaning via an online vampire community. His desire for transformation invested in finding someone who can turn his teeth into literal fangs. Glynn’s experiences touch on issues of urban alienation, the lure of the pseudo-philosophical, quick fix as a substitute for ultimate lack of meaning or intimate connection - here represented in the many references to wellness culture.

“Passenger” is promising, if uneven, and “Birthday Teeth” is admirably inventive, filled with pleasing details from the diabetic dog to Glynn’s mum’s tea drinking. There’s a sensibility that at times reminded me of reading work from the fin de siècle, there’s a similar focus on enervated men struggling to find a footing in a hostile, decaying world. But neither story totally worked for me, particularly Morris’s blend of the real and the surreal. The different elements seemed awkwardly sutured together, and the commentary on the character’s inner lives could feel forced and overstated. Although these, along with the earlier narratives, combine to form an interesting critique of aspects of contemporary masculinity and the stifling weight of conventional gender roles.

For me “Aberkariad” is by far the stand-out here, enough to make the entire book worthwhile. Set in a fantasy, undersea world, it’s close to novella in length and presented from the point of view of a young seahorse eager to become an adult. Admirably detailed, drawing directly on the life cycles and mating rituals of actual seahorses, it’s a complex variation on a coming-of-age narrative, fresh and fluid, intense, intimate and often incredibly moving.

Open Up is a compelling and richly textured collection of short stories loosely connected by strands of profound disenfranchisement and disconnection between the characters and the world around them. It highlights the melancholy, the yearning, and their outsiderdom, and not only is Morris a great writer, but he is also a fantastic short story crafter, a hurdle that even great writing pioneers have fallen at. The opener, "Wales", is a powerful and tender ode to maintaining hope in a hopeless world - through fandom and football, set at Euro 2016. Against a backdrop of poverty and adversity, a boy attends his first live international football match with his father and realises following his team has the benefits of being part of something even for a few hours giving him hope for the future. He finds release and magic in the chanting, singing and excited screams that erupt around him. In juxtaposition to this freeness and jubilation, the boy must come to terms with his parents break-up and the fact that he and his mother will lose their home before the year is out.

"Aberkariad" is a bizarre, surrealist meditation on love, loss, coming of age and the meaning of life as well as a social commentary on the culture of one-night stands and meaningless liaisons between people. Told through the perspective of an amorous seahorse (and his family) who is in pain due to the disappearance of his mother, we learn about the meaning of life. And in the last three stories we encounter Big Mike ("Little Wizard"), a football prodigy who has been told he is too short in stature to become a professional. Having just turned 30, he is frustrated at his dead-end job in an office and asks his best friend out on a date via text message due to running out of potential matches on Tinder; in "Passenger", Geraint is also on the cusp of an age milestone as he stumbles through life thinking about his fading youth and imminent middle age. His stunning girlfriend, Niamh, tries to support him and they travel to Croatia for a holiday together, but Geraint doesn't feel worthy of his other half which leads to neglecting her at her most vulnerable moments. He begins to have anxiety about the past and terrifying visions that haunt him psychologically.

Lastly, in "Birthday Teeth" we meet Glyn, an online forum moderator who decides to head to a backstreet dentist and get his teeth sharpened to resemble a pair of vampire fangs as a present to himself on his special day. This is an entertaining, unusual and often surreal five-story anthology by one of the up-and-comers of the literary sphere. Replete with emotion, originality, humour and humanity, we are treated to truth and tenderness against the backdrop of an unsettled and strangely dislocated world. The focus here is on men on the edge, the precipice. Grief, loss, love, self-doubt, adversity and past trauma are just some of the issues explored throughout by Morris' deft hand. Recurring characters include a variety of anxious men who have a yearning to belong and to fare better with women, absent fathers, failed relationships and other solitary figures - this is what thematically connects each story to its predecessor. Dark, realistic and beautifully portrayed, this is a poignant and dazzling collection from a writer to watch.

Firstly, thank you to Netgalley and publishers for the review copy!

This was a collection of five short stories with themes of masculinity, loneliness and being Welsh. That was an unexpected surprise, being Welsh myself I don’t think I read a whole lot with Wales as a setting. I enjoyed a majority of the stories, I especially enjoyed the seahorse story and the vampire story. The magical realism elements were fun. I’m definitely interested to read more from this author.

I love short stories and really loved the first story in this collection 'Wales' as it encapsulates everything that I think makes a short story good - wonderful characters and emotion depicted so succinctly and yet you feel you have read more. Overall, an interesting collection of some quirky stories.

Thomas Morris’s first short story collection, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing, was a series of little masterpieces. He was clearly a natural with the standard short story format.

Perhaps because of this, Open Up, his new collection, is bursting out of the conventional. In most of the stories there is an alternative reality, a kind of dream or Wonderland or Matrix operating in characters’ minds.. Personally, my favourites were the least weird: Wales and Little Wizard. But Morris is such a skilled writer that he can manage to give coherence to the strange double-worlds.

This would be a five-star if it weren’t for Aberkariad.

Open Up is a beautiful collection of stories, each one connecting to the title - some more overtly than others.
Aberkariad was the standout story for me amongst a very well-written collection, the vulnerability and beauty of this story has stayed with me after finishing the book, and I often think about it weeks after finishing it.
I’ve heard excellent things about Morris’s other short story collection and I will be seeking this out too - he has a wonderful way of writing and looking forward to reading more of it.

Open Up by Thomas Morris is a brilliant collection of four short stories. The stories embrace a theme of isolation and disconnection in a very relatable and tender manner where you’re surrounded by people that feel miles away. These are stories that will continue to pop into your head long after you’ve finished reading them.

Open Up is a collection of (longish) short stories that have themes of Welshness and male vulnerability. I really enjoyed the writing of the raw and honest characters, although I felt like the story about the seahorses jarred and was out of place (and at times seemed tediously long) with the rest of the collection.
That said, I would look out for more writing by Thomas Morris, particularly a full length novel.
Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read this on the strength of Thomas Morris being named one of Granta's 20 best young British Novelists. This is his second collection of short stories, but my introduction to his work.

As an aside, it seems a bit odd that he's been included on a list of the best young novelists when he is a short story writer who has never published a novel. But that isn't to suggest he doesn't deserve the accolade and if more people read the book as a result that's all to the good.

'Wales' is a simple story of a child attending his first football match with his father. It’s the shortest in the collection and is perhaps a little slight, though it has all the heart that characterises the collection.

'Aberkariad' is a coming of age tale about family and loss, told from the perspective of a sea horse. If you had explained the conceit to me I may have rolled my eyes, but it is well done and absolutely works.

'The Wizard' is about an office worker, disappointed in life and unable to find love, who blames his (lack of) height for holding him back. This story reminded me somewhat of David Szalay in tone and the way that he captures male frustration.

In 'Passenger' a young man spends a holiday in Croatia with his girlfriend. He is crippled by a lack of self-confidence and assertiveness. For me the writing, already strong, went up a notch as the young struggled with his imagined, but for him very real, inner demons.

'Birthday Teeth' features a vampire going to the dentist to get their fangs. That sounds a bit out there, but the story never makes entirely clear whether the protagonist is a vampire or, in my preferred reading of the story, a young goth getting some body modification. For me this was a story of a young man who feels alienated in his home time who relies on and has found some kinship with an online community.

I have a difficulty with short story collections in that the individual stories rarely stay with me. Stories often blur together and I am left enjoying the collection as a whole without individual stories making an impact. I'm happy to say that wasn't the case here, perhaps because the stories are mostly a little longer and so have time to breathe. And while the stories are distinct (covering as they do seahorses and vampiric dentistry) there are common threads that that mean they work as a collection: growing up, alienation, masculinity, the effect of poverty and difficult family relationships.

Overall I enjoyed this collection a great deal. The writing is very strong but the stories are made by the sensitivity and heart with which they are written.

"So much of my life feels unreal tome, he told her. It's as if I'm watching it all happen to someone else."

This is an absolutely incredible collection of stories. I was so impressed by the surreal, strange twists and turns they took. It's really hard to pick a favourite story, but if I had to, I would pick the closing one, "Birthday Teeth." I love the deadpan first-person narrator and his life as a vampire - it made me laugh a lot, and also kind of want to cry (as all of the stories did). I also loved "Little Wizard" - very sad and touching story. Sad and touching is a good phrase for this collection overall, I think - beautifully melancholic yet also uplifting. I would describe to toI love the focus on class and on how difficult life could be in stories like "Wales" and "Passenger." And of course the seahorse story is just a stunner. Just a really brilliant collection overall - I can't overstate how much these stories moved me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

"I began to wonder what my own life means--and what any life is really for. There's a hole in all of us, I believe. We can try to fill the hole with explanations and distractions, and for a while our efforts might work and we might go to sleep feeling full, but in the morning we'll always wake up empty."

"He had the thought of digging up a fresh grave, drinking a bottle of drain cleaner, and just rolling himself in. He wouldn't be no harm to anyone then, and no one would have to deal with his body."

"Since I was little, I have operated under the belief that there is something wrong with me. I've pictured organs rotting, devouring me from the inside."

"My body was a landfill and it needed trash to burn."

"He actually looks a bit like me before I started secondary school, before my screws were loosened and I lost my mind."

First things first, thank you NetGalley and Faber for sending me a copy of this collection. I very much appreciate it.

Open Up contains 5 short stories by Welsh author Thomas Morris. Rarely in my life have I been so taken by every single story included in a collection. With themes of loneliness, manhood and coming of age, the stories all pack a punch and left me thinking about them for a good while after reading the final line. They are simply written too, not leaving so much guesswork, with a lot of heart.

Except for the first story, they each clock in at around 50 pages, so there's a lot of character development and also well-fleshed-out endings. This was a nice change because I've found in recent years a lot of collections are starting to contain more flash stories, and this was personally putting me off the form because they were too vague and poetic for my liking. I prefer sticking with a story and characters for a while, and Morris here absolutely nails it. I guess you could argue that the five stories are more like novelettes (I'm not being pretentious here... That's a genuine term! Check Wikipedia.)

Other reviewers have said what each story is about, so I won't go into tons of detail... But I will say, it's worth buying this collection alone for the story Little Wizard, which follows a below-average male in his early 30s who is going through an existential crisis. That story kept me up for a few hours during a stupidly warm night, thinking and wondering and wanting to read it again. So I did.

I would give this collection 5 stars but I would have loved just another story to bulk the book up, which would make the asking price more fair. Is that greedy of me? Yes. But consider it a compliment, Mr Morris, because I'm asking for more. I will still purchase this when it comes out. Hopefully, I can grab a signed copy.

I've read Morris' other collection (We Don't Know What We're Doing) and that was brilliant too. So if you haven't read that, check it out and pre-order Open Up, too.

Tell you what, call it 4.5 stars.

I read this short story collection as the author was recently selected for the decennial Granta Best of Young British Novelists list (2023 edition).

This is (upcoming later in 2023) second short story collection of the Ireland-based, South Wales born author whose 2016 debut short story collection “We Don’t Know What We’re Doing” (based around his home town of Caerphilly, and with a titular nod to his love of football) won a number of awards, and who was for a number of years the editor-in-chief of the Irish literary magazine “Stinging Fly” (where he was succeeded by a certain Sally Rooney).

Like all short story collections there is an unevenness to the stories (albeit only 5 in this case with three around the 50 page mark so allowing for the character development that is often lacking in the form) - but let me say up front that I was very taken with much of the writing. This is a book which does not concentrate, like so much literary fiction, on didactic treatment of the latest liberal causes or on supposedly provocative transgressive writing but on looking with a real heart and empathy deep into the insecurities of its characters (typically from broken and/or struggling families). It is a very down to earth collection - which may seem surprising to say when one character is a sea horse and another a vampire - but there we are.

If I had to draw a literary comparison I would pick the brilliant Wendy Erskine.

I assume that the Granta nomination was based on a novel-in-draft although I cannot see any evidence of a future novel title announced and the Granta magazine featured the first story from this collection “Wales” a short and for me, slightly over simplistic tale of a young boy attending his first football match with his estranged father. I felt here that Nick Hornsby had done the same, with at the time complete originality, and with added depth and embedded in a much longer autobiographical memoir, more than 30 years ago.

I was also slightly unsure of the last story “Birthday Teeth” as while it shares much of the underlying approach of the other stories, the tale of a young vampire getting his first fangs on his 21st birthday and his struggles with a mother obsessed with cutting off the internet, was perhaps a little too odd.

But the heart of the book was in the three middle stories.

“Aberkaraid” - narrated by the seahorse son of a father with a hopelessly naive view of the imminent return of the narrators mother simply should not work as an exploration of parenthood, belonging and relationships but it simply does and wonderfully so.

“Little Wizard” is the second shortest story but is a gem - a short, office worker struggles existentially and reaches out to a girl who has been his lifelong friend, deciding for once to take a risk.

“Passenger” is the standout story in the collection. A young couple spend a summer holiday in Croatia with the boy quite literally confronting the demons in his own mind from his impoverished upbringing and very difficult relationship with his father, trying to come to terms with its impact on him as an adult (a chronic lack of self confidence, decision making and assertiveness; a tendency to erect barriers in a relationship) while also starting to understand how his partner’s childhood is also playing out in heir relationship.

Recommended - an enjoyable collection in its own right and I look forward to the author’s novelistic debut when it comes.

My thanks to Faber & Faber for an ARC via NetGalley

"Just because an experience is common, it doesn't make it any less painful to go through."

A beautiful collection of five short stories that invoke an entire range of emotions in a dazzling, highly conceptual and striking way.

A young boy watches his first football match with his dad and tries to summon magic, a sentient Welsh seahorse tries to understand love and loss for the first time, a bitter, below average height office worker tries to fix his life, a conversation between lovers leads to them realising how their childhoods have shaped them, a young vampire gets their internet cut off by their mother — each of these stories paint a hauntingly evocative portrait of aspects of the human condition and the ways we uncover ourselves and learn more about who we are. Each is a snapshot of a life, a transient moment of self-exploration and discovery. Of course each story has its own merits, some longer than others and they have different styles of storytelling so you may not like every one but the themes and feelings woven through them make this an interesting, impactful read.

Thomas Morris has a distinct voice, with beautifully poetic prose that is layered with nuance and vivid imagery, with deep meaning and achingly authentic ideas that reach into the reader to create a genuine connection and recognition.

I was keen to review Open Up when I saw that Thomas Morris was the editor of The Stinging Fly, a magazine whose contributors offer a roll call of Irish writing excellence. Narrated in the first person, all five of the stories that make up this collection share the painful dislocation of young males who can’t quite make the emotional connections they long for. My favourite was the poignant yet playful Aberkariad about a family of seahorses whose father waits for his long-lost love. Suffused with a raw sadness, Passenger, the second stand out piece, sees a young man on holiday with his beloved girlfriend, desperate to offer the intimacy she longs for, finally free of the litany of anxious self-doubt that loops in his head. An enjoyable collection but one I liked rather than loved although my expectations had been very high.

This collection of stories is quite remarkable, offering a powerful exploration of a range of important themes and experiences. The stories are a potent blend of fierceness and tenderness, delving into the worlds of young boys and lost young men, and the psychological effects of growing up in poverty and deprived childhoods.