Karen Stevens’s debut collection transports the reader straight into her fictional world with a tag line that sounds both like a warning and an invitation: "Welcome to the infamous Duncock Estate." In nine tightly structured and beautifully written stories, she conjures a coastal council estate that hums with life: chip-shop queues, neon-slick pavements, gossip passed over fences like contraband. The world is so sharply etched that you feel the salt sting off the Channel each time you turn a page.
What makes these stories sing is the way Stevens pairs raw circumstance with a fierce, steady compassion. Her people have worries that could crush them, yet they keep reaching for connection, however fleeting. The prose itself flashes, but there’s precision beneath the sparkle. Sentences are lean, images exact; a chipped sink or a scrawl of graffiti serves as both social backdrop and inner weather report. You sense the author’s quiet fascination with ephemera: half-heard remarks or slivers of stored memories resurfacing in adulthood. Each becomes a seed that flowers briefly on the page before drifting off, leaving ripples in the reader’s mind. In "Where You’re Heading," the narrator remarks, "Thing is, Owen, since the dream I can only imagine you in space, and that’s how I want to keep you – hanging in blackness and ready to sing for me."
Running through the collection is a clear conviction that short fiction can do something uniquely powerful with brevity. Stevens trusts her readers to make imaginative leaps, to stand in the little gaps she leaves and feel the full weight of what isn’t said. The result is exhilarating: every story closes like a camera shutter, but the after-image lingers. In another moving story, "The Vigil," Stevens’ precise handling of atmosphere, setting and character is evident: "Already, the impression made by the old man’s body would be less distinct as snow fell soundlessly on snow."
Brilliant Blue is, above all, generous. It insists that hope can survive even the toughest postcode; that humour finds its way into the room, uninvited, whenever people gather; that ordinary lives are anything but. Step onto the Duncock Estate and you’ll leave painted the brightest, most unforgettable shade of blue.
Dr. Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer living in Cornwall. His interests include dystopian studies, children’s literature and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic form. His debut children’s novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press (2022) and fiction titles he has recently worked on as commissioning editor have won multiple regional readers’ and publishers’ awards.
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