Review by Rhiannon Buckley of "Angel Reach" by Gus Gresham

Characters feel unflinchingly imperfect and real in this collection of short stories by Gus Gresham. For me, the author writes in a way which is unapologetic to the human experience and calls on you to see through another’s eyes. When the character stumbles upon a question, often seemingly unanswerable, I found myself asking the same thing.

Not all books are easy for me to visualise but the stories Angel Reach flowed beautifully and played out like a movie in my mind. None more so than "Woofers and Tweeters" - I love the way the characters here intertwine, adding layers as you read. I really do look forward to reading more short stories from Gus Gresham. Excellent stuff!

About the reviewer
Rhiannon Buckley is an East Midlands based author, actor and communication skills educator. Her first book A Mind Blown was published in 2025. 

You can read more about Angel Reach by Gus Gresham on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Gus Gresham of "Maybe the Birds" by A. J. Ashworth

This short story collection by A. J. Ashworth is a rewarding read, each story like a piece of mysterious treasure from a dug-up pirates’ chest. The prose is beautiful, understated, sometimes beguiling, and full of humanity.

In the title story, we understand that we are in the midst of something apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic. Aside from hints, the details of the main "event" are left out. The focus is the effects upon the lives of survivors, upon a particular survivor, and the warm relationship between her and her dog. It’s about what we might leave behind as a legacy when the familiar world is lost, and in her case this takes the form of recreating the lost sounds of birdsong with bespoke clay pipes.

"Leather" is effectively a story about a story. It reads as a review of a story about woman’s strange "find" in a second-hand bookshop. This review approach works surprisingly well. It’s a clever, playful and enjoyable device. The story is analysed and questioned for us by a fictional narrator/reviewer who employs tantalising quotes from the story itself. Some of the descriptive language and tone-setting is particularly strong: "… the kind of curdled light that comes before a rainstorm," echoed later, in other lines like fried eggs that are "broken and bleeding yellow onto the plate."

"Mirrors" was a personal favourite. It has the sense of something apocalyptic again, like "Maybe the Birds," but "Mirrors" is even darker, more enigmatic, told in second person, and with the prose itself fractured on and across the pages. Unsettling to say the least, and rendered so beautifully.

There is scope for humour, too, in this collection. The premise of "The Monolith" can be gleaned from the following short quote as the protagonist speaks with her ex on the phone: "…thinks she sees a ripple across the monolith, as if it’s made of black liquid. ‘I’m not joking, Carl. There’s a monolith in the yard.’" There is so much to enjoy in this story. Mystery, inventiveness, the study of relationships, and of course more gorgeous prose: "A gust of wind makes the window frame crack like a bone."

"Small Feathers Falling" centres on the treatment of women by some men. There are creepiness and horror in this tale, which – among other things – stands as a stark reminder of how we should listen to our gut when the early warning bells chime in a new relationship. We dismiss sinister behaviour all too often, don’t we?, and let it slide all too often. The casually delivered, derogatory names the male antagonist calls the female protagonist become "dark moths in her head." The descriptions of the owl are wonderful, and the story’s creepiness and tension build to a point where anything could and does happen.

The book’s "Afterword" is an insightful essay which provides a more academic angle on the book’s themes. Ashworth talks of "… how female characters in postapocalyptic settings … [continue] … with preapocalyptic activities." List-making and sculpture are suggested to be the mainstay here, and indeed the title story comes back to mind with the protagonist’s careful and loving clay-hewn "syrinxes" designed to mimic the sounds of birds in a world that has lost its birds (and we has suspect lost much more).

Each story is also rich with allegory, in my view, and Maybe the Birds is a collection to be savoured.

About the Reviewer
Gus Gresham’s short stories have appeared in literary magazines and online, many of which are now collected in his latest book, Angel Reach. He is author of the novel Kyiv Trance and of the young adult novels Earthrise and Marmalade Skies. He has travelled widely and worked as a mechanical engineer, fruit picker, construction worker, environmental activist, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal skills facilitator, and building surveyor.

You can read more about Maybe the Birds by A. J. Ashworth on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Gus Gresham of "Pictures of Yukio" by Brian Howell

While reading this chapbook short story, I had a sense of moving towards something mystical, poetic and subtly menacing. Three Japanese university students become enamoured of the work of Mishima Yukio, a writer who was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s. 

In the modern day setting of the story, Yukio’s shadowy face appears on the wall of a university building, its clarity subject to changes in daylight and sunlight. Pictures of Yukio is driven as much by the pictures of Yukio on the wall as it is by pictures / vignettes of the three student friends, Yutaka, Kimie and Osamu.

According to some sources, Mishima Yukio was a controversial figure, espousing right-wing views that mourned the loss of Imperial Japanese culture, and his writing was a flamboyant fusion of Japanese and Western styles. By contrast, stylistically, Howell’s prose is clear, spare and understated, but Mishima’s life and motivations are echoed in Howell’s story. There are parallel themes, including the theme of “manifesto.” The manifesto of the friends is also a call to arms for returning to the past, but this modern manifesto focuses around the idea of rejecting the globalised Western-driven trend of digital connectivity and the ills of social media that are in ascendancy in modern societies the world over.

Our narrator, Yutaka, offers an early prefiguring: “once you start texting, it becomes complicated. Misunderstandings pile on misunderstandings that can only really be sorted out in the real world of face-to-face communication.” And there are undertones of casual menace in the everyday: “I had noticed a samurai sword specialist shop adjacent to the love hotel.”

Given that Mishima Yukio was an alumnus of the university where the three friends study – and that Yukio delivered an impassioned political speech followed by ritual suicide – a reader is at once beguiled and fascinated, and wonders where this absorbing story will ultimately lead.

Pictures of Yukio is haunting and beautifully written. It lives on in the memory after reading. It made me want to know more about the inspirations behind it, and more about the author. Brian Howell lives outside Tokyo and teaches in Japan. He is also an established writer of short stories and novels. I have no hesitation recommending this forthcoming chapbook story and I’ll certainly be checking out more of Howell’s work.

 

About the Reviewer 
Gus Gresham has an MA in Creative Writing (NTU) and has worked as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, environmental activist, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, medical-scenario simulator/facilitator, civil funeral celebrant, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines including Brittle Star and Under the Radar, and his most recent novel, Kyiv Trance – a dark, twisty, love story and crime thriller – is available on Amazon.

Review by Gus Gresham of "Umbilical" by Teika Marija Smits

While savouring this stunning collection of stories, I kept asking myself (as an avid reader and writer) ‘What’s the most effective way of getting a reader’s attention?’ Because Umbilical does grab the attention and does not let go. It’s stylish, intriguing, beautifully written. There are characters and concepts that fascinate, beguile, bewilder. But there is something else going on here …

Teika Marija Smits is not writing sci-fi, fantasy, horror or speculative fiction for its own sake; she is employing elements of these in ways that are on-point. Whether a story has social justice at its core, the human condition, relationships, or the dangers of unfettered medical and tech development, the ideas are handled with subtlety and skill. 

She trusts her own intuitions, too – like the narrator of the title story who hears “those ancient, knowing whisperings arising from my womb”. Smits knows that the ‘darker’ parts of ourselves that we so often dismiss are the places where treasures may be found.

Because it would be difficult to summarise any of the stories (without committing spoiler-crime), I can only tantalise and tease:

In ‘Death of the Grapevine,’ we meet a computer engineer whose job it is to troubleshoot an in-house AI system and carry out a bizarre and strangely sad form of maintenance. In ‘His Birth,’ amid the sensitive and powerful rendering of the bond between a mother and child, we meet a creature known as a lamphine. In ‘Girls’ Night Out,’ the first-person plural pronoun ‘we’ takes on a whole other mysterious and resonant meaning. In ‘Our Lady of Flies,’ loss, misunderstanding and a failing relationship are deftly explored. In other stories, such as ‘Star Making at Sellafield,’ we encounter tenderness and hope.

As for the earlier question (What’s the most effective way of getting a reader’s attention?) Teika Marija Smits’s answer is to explore issues from quirky angles, thereby offering unique, enthralling perspectives.

A thoroughly engaging and enjoyable collection.

About the reviewer
Gus Gresham has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing (NTU) and has worked as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, community activist for Greenpeace, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, medical-scenario simulator/facilitator, civil funeral celebrant, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines including Brittle Star and Under the Radar, and his most recent novel, Kyiv Trance – a dark, twisty, love story and crime thriller – is available on Amazon.

You can read more about Umbilical by Teika Marija Smits on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Gus Gresham of "The Mad Road" by Laurie Cusack

As reviewer Alexandros Plasatis says on the back cover, "The Mad Road is a hooligan of a book.” It’s easy to see why as you dive headlong into these riveting, gutsy tales. If you like your fiction cosy and fluffy and all wrapped up with a pink bow, stay clear!

In the opening story, "The Bottle and the Trowel," a man walks out along a soggy rotten board on a scaffold, falls to his near-doom and ends up on life support. "You’ve got to hear this, Gerry!" his friend says at the bedside as he begins to narrate the harrowing circumstances that plague their lives. And this story could be a metaphor for the whole collection. Reading these stories feels like walking along a dodgy scaffold, hoping that the next step you take won’t send you plummeting to the ground where unknown horrors await.

"A Doc Marten boot met the crack of Desmond O’Hara’s arse" is the opening line to "Ghost Estate" in which our anti-hero faces retribution for his exploitative dealings during the years of the Celtic Tiger economy. What will become of him? 

Whether the stories are set in Ireland itself or amid London Irish communities, Cusack serves up a smorgasbord of characters who are as contrary as the day is long. In The Mad Road, we get an up-close-and-intimate perspective on these fallible lives. Lovable smooth-tongued travellers; a young man new to London whose rites of passage bring him face to face with the menacing Zen-like character known as "The Bear"; a woman on the edge making a passionate stand against social injustice; a father who will give anything to get his girl through dancing school.

What will become of any of them? As Oscar Wilde once said, "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." So if you like your fiction gritty, turbulent and off-the-leash, this is the book for you. It has heart, it has soul, it has guts. It will mess with your head.

One thing’s for sure, I’ll probably never be able to look at a building site or a coin-operated laundrette in quite the same way again.

About the Reviewer
Gus Gresham has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing (NTU) and has worked variously as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, community activist for Greenpeace, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, medical-scenario simulator and facilitator, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines including Brittle Star and Under the Radar, and his most recent novel, Kyiv Trance – a dark, twisty love story and crime thriller – is available on Amazon. You can read more about Kyiv Trance on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Laurie Cusack of "Kyiv Trance" by Gus Gresham

Beautifully researched − Kyiv Trance is a stone-cold classic − Brilliant in its execution − Gresham's crime thriller is truly mesmerizing  −  Utterly unputdownable − Outstanding!

Blah, blah, blah … How many times have you read over-hyped blurb like this? Too many, I know, but this text is the real deal … honest to god, cross my heart and hope to die!

For starters Gresham’s subject matter couldn’t be more topical. Everyone wants to know about Kyiv now – our sympathies go out to Ukraine in all its adversity. Moreover, there is a hunger to be better informed about its people, culture and way of life. I think we all agree there’s no better way to satisfy that hunger than racing through a sizzling page turner!

Gresham’s atmospheric opening, for instance, draws the reader right into the subterranean bowel of Kyiv: "Richard was riding the improbably long escalators again. From deep down behind him, he could still hear accordion music and the husky voice of the old busker in the strains of a Slavic folksong. It wasn’t necessary to understand Ukrainian to know that the song was about tragedy and loss."

Throughout razor-sharp Kyiv Trance you glean an understanding of Ukraine’s unique Orange Revolution, which was bloodless-civil disobedience after the fraudulent elections of 2004/2005. Gresham, skilfully, sprinkles and captures the zeitgeist moments of a nation that was on the cusp of democratic change, during that tumultuous period. 

The impressive juxtaposition of a maniac on the loose, as this political turmoil is  unfolding, reads very well. Alongside this, Gresham’s haunted protagonist Richard Farr battles to make sense of it all after falling head over heels with beautiful Nadya. There is a lot going on within Kyiv Trance but as a reader you are never lost, as the seamless flashbacks and back story are handled deftly.

They also say good writing is about how you handle detail − keeping your ear to the ground is paramount − Kyiv Trance royally delivers on that score: "Bar Zavtra’s music system was playing Ella Fitzgerald. ‘How Deep is the Ocean?’ Her voice had to compete with the shopping-centre Muzak – some soulless atrocity that sounded like a panpipe rendition of Motorhead’s ‘The Ace of Spades.’"

I was reminded of Martin Cruz Smith’s dynamic thriller Gorky Park to some extent as I read Gresham’s text − both plots are set in the east and are meditations on political power whilst examining the social fabric close-up through the lens of the crime thriller genre. Both highlight how systems work and how people strive and survive within those systems. Kyiv Trance is a blast and brilliantly observed.

About the reviewer
Laurie Cusack (PhD) studied Creative Writing at Leicester University. He writes from the gut − from the underground − about the underdog. His collection of short stories The Mad Road is out in September. He is now an actor-simulator, writer and community advocate.

You can read more about Kyiv Trance by Gus Gresham, as well as an excerpt from the novel, on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Gus Gresham of "Drowning: A Memoir" by Andy Palmer

 

This is a well-crafted real-life tale that packs a punch with its no-nonsense language. It’s funny, sad, moving, and shocking in places. But what will draw in, disarm and beguile a reader most of all is the courage and honesty of the writing.

 

The book is subtitled A Memoir, but it definitely reads like a novel. With its unflinching scrutiny of human failings and the depths to which addiction can drag a person, it put the reviewer in mind of the extraordinary Melvin Burgess’s Junk.

As the central character of his own story, Andy is a flawed anti-hero who is desperate to be understood and loved, but who frequently hits the self-destruct button. Even during the experimentation of his adolescent years, the seeds of desperation are sprouting. In one passage, he is abusing his medicinal inhaler, taking snort after snort because it produces a kind of high. When the inhaler is exhausted, “I grabbed a can of deodorant, wrapped a towel around the top and sprayed it into my mouth breathing in the fumes. It worked …”

We feel his pain and shame as he rips off his grandad and raids the neighbours’ medicine cabinet. Anything to get a fix. And as he leaves school and gets paid work, he begins to consume truly frightening amounts of alcohol. The writing cleverly distorts the narrator’s motives: is he getting wasted for its own sake or doing it as a means of self-annihilation? “Nothing can beat oblivion. I wanted all my feelings to go. I wanted to be numb.” There was a scene in the Mike Figgis film Leaving Las Vegas (1995) in which Elisabeth Shue’s character says something like, “So you’re drinking as a way of killing yourself?” And Nicolas Cage’s character says something like, “Or killing myself is a way to drink.”

In Drowning, however, it’s not just booze. And amid the spare language, room is carved out for arresting imagery. There are fine passages describing tripping on acid or coming up on MDMA: “My stomach turned into a jellyfish and floated off.”

Andy Palmer’s prose is very real and immediate. And disturbing. You have to keep reading because your head is whirling with questions like, What’s going to happen? How can it possibly end?

A fantastic reminder, too, that indie publishing has some priceless gems to offer.

About the reviewer
Gus Gresham is an avid reader and writer. He has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and has worked variously as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, community activist for Greenpeace, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal and communication skills facilitator, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines Brittle Star and Under The Radar, and his recently published novel, EARTHRISE, is available on Amazon. You can read a review of it here. 

Review by Katherine Hetzel of "Marmalade Skies" by Gus Gresham

It took me a while to get into this story, as to begin with it didn’t really feel like a story as such – more a stitching together of scenes of childhood from a time I well remember living through myself. I used to play ‘over the fields’ too (rather than in the woods) with a gang of friends, witnessed school-lunchtime fights and the chanting that went with them, played my LPs on the record player, watched my dad carry home a Party Seven …

I’d describe it as a young ‘coming-of-age’ novel, as it follows Vonnie and Matt through most of their first year in senior school. They face a variety of challenges – some mere inconveniences, others more serious – at home and in school during this time. Such as, how many new pennies are in half a crown? What’s the best way of dealing with communal showers after PE? How to keep out of Skinner’s way when he’s had too much to drink? Will mum ever be brave enough to leave him? And can you really parachute off the extension roof using a tablecloth? (You can’t).

Gresham describes the day-to-day living and schooling in detail, capturing the mood of the era well. At times – for me at least – there was a little too much of this description and not enough story; the descriptive scenes didn’t always help to move things on. They felt more like an indulgent meander down memory lane rather than an integral part of the novel in some places. The voice of the novel feels much older than that of the 11 year old characters, and could therefore impact on the age range of the target audience, but if a child today read this as a study of their grandparents’ childhood … I think they’d be left gobsmacked at what we used to get up to. 

About the reviewer

Katherine Hetzel writes fantasy adventures for middle grade readers and is a founding member of NIBS, a small creative writing group in Loughborough. She blogs about life and writing at Squidge's Scribbles and enjoys working with writers of all ages to enable them to tell their own stories. You can see her books here. 

Review by Gus Gresham of "Poppy Flowers at the Front" by Jon Wilkins

This is a poignant, compelling story of love and desolation amid the sterling work of ambulance women during the 1914-18 World War.

As any good reader or writer knows, it is the detail that convinces and transports us to the virtual landscape of a story. Like all great novels set in the First World War (All Quiet On The Western Front; A Farewell To Arms …), Jon Wilkins’s excellent novel, Poppy Flowers At The Front, airlifts us directly into the sights and smells and sounds and mud and blood and horror and senseless waste of the trenches.

We are in safe hands, though (we hope), with the engaging narrator Poppy Loveday, who guides us through her story as surely as her ambulance negotiates the muddy rutted tracks between the field hospital and the Front, with shells exploding around her. She is diligent in her selfless efforts, but is consumed daily by the suffering of "young boys in pain, a pain they did not deserve. Boys who screamed in terror, far from home and their mothers."

Yet, amid it all, there is light-hearted relief, humour and sensitivity, especially in the jaunts to Paris, rural France and rural England. And on a visit home, there is a beautifully understated exchange as Poppy’s father quizzes her about how hard life really is on the Western Front: "'Now tell me all about France, the truth mind…' So, I did and he was very quiet and very shocked."

The main counterpoint to the horrors of trench-warfare is embodied in a wonderfully handled and sensitive love story. The reader turns the pages in anticipation of something dreadful happening to the heroine or her lover at any time … and … (no spoilers!). Recommended.


About the reviewer
Gus Gresham is an avid reader and writer. He has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and has worked variously as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, community activist for Greenpeace, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal and communication skills facilitator, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines Brittle Star and Under The Radar, and his recently published novel, EARTHRISE, is available on Amazon. You can read a review of it here. 

Review by Laurie Cusack of "Earthrise" by Gus Gresham

Earthrise by Gus Gresham ticks all the boxes where page turning is concerned. He draws the reader in from the very first line regarding his feisty heroine: “Erin would remember this as the night everything started getting messed up beyond all recognition.”

The novel is a coruscating read and a testimony of our times concerning the way vested interests manipulate power and our freewill for unadulterated profit; they don’t care if it makes us sick or unwell. Earthrise explores these themes with relish. 

What also makes Gresham’s scorching text stand out is the way it dramatizes the courage and integrity of young adults, with Pullmanesque aplomb. After all, someone must make a stand, or we all will perish. These young adults have guts. They have something to say.

Earthrise is riveting and scary at times as it scrapes under the skin of corporate greed with surgical expertise. And Gresham handles the tense mirroring of reality and fantasy with skilful craft and gusto. This dark twisted fantasy is the real deal … Brilliant!


About the reviewer
Laurie Cusack has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. He is currently working on his first collection of short stories. His story 'The Bottle and the Trowel' is published in the anthology High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories. You can read more about his work here.