Open Up

Product Information

But appearances can be deceptive. He may have been a literary aristocrat, but he was also a member of the precariat, without a home, never mind a room, of his own. The average author does not earn much, but the short-story writer is usually the poor relation.

a b "Thomas Morris: 'I was hiding. I hid my stammer. I hid that we were poor. My characters can't hide any more' ". The Irish Times . Retrieved 2023-08-13. Heart-hurtingly acute, laugh-out-loud funny, and one of the most satisfying collections I’ve read for years.’ ALI SMITH, Guardian Books of the Year With precision, wry humour and a generous heart, Morris visits life’s agonies and ecstasies.’ NATHAN FILER

Advance Praise

They eat outside the chippy, leaning against the window. The chips are hot and moist with vinegar. Inside, a girl with a red dragon stencilled on her cheek stands beside her dad, with a burger and a can of Coke. If she looks at Gareth, Wales will win.

It’s a story about ageing, about adapting, about hiding, about surviving, about myth-making, and about emigrating and integrating. And it’s also a story about groups and belonging, about being alone and persisting, about likenesses and differences, about falling in love and connecting, and how the story of all these things is also the story of the history of the world. When Thomas Morris’s first short story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing was published in 2015, it felt like a new literary star wasn’t just born, he had arrived fully formed. Hailed by the likes of Colm Tóibín and Ali Smith, the latter of whom called the collection “one of the most satisfying [she’d] read in years”, it brought Morris one step closer to the spotlight he’s often shied away from.Morgan, Sion (2016-07-21). "Wales Book of the Year 2016 announced". WalesOnline . Retrieved 2023-07-25. In his first book, he was trying to write a really good story. Now he was trying to understand parts of himself he hadn’t encountered before, led more by instinct and following feelings rather than beginning with an idea.

Associate publisher Louisa Joyner acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency. "Philosophically acute and strikingly original," the publisher said of the collection: "Thomas Morris powerfully interrogates themes of connection and (dis)connection as he seeks to find grace, hope and benevolence in the churning tumult of self-discovery." I’ve been taking my time with Lispector’s Complete Stories, partly because I’ve decided I’m only allowed to buy her books when I visit Foyles in London, and partly because each of her stories is like a small bomb: it takes time to recover from each blast. BIRTHDAY TEETH From Etheric cord to “radical honesty” to vampire teeth implants. This is one weird story and I cannot honestly say it’s a great short story on which to finish a collection. The first surprise is that there are only five stories in this relatively short book, which in the hands of another writer might be too few. Morris uses the space to his advantage, taking the reader deep into the worlds and mindsets of characters who are invariably undergoing some kind of personal crisis, many of them rooted in family and legacy, others in a more general existentialist malaise. Thomas Morris’s debut story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing won the Wales Book of the Year Award, the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. His stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published and anthologised in Zoetrope, Best European Fiction 2018 and The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story. He lives in Dublin, where he is Editor-at-Large at the Stinging Fly.The ironically named Big Mike in ‘Little Wizard’ has been consistently overlooked, due to his short height, his whole life – by his boss, football scouts, and potential romantic partners. His lifelong best friend, Rhian, knows all his secrets and desires except one – he loves her. In a heartachingly honest portrait of one lonely man’s evening, Morris leaves the story with Big Mike finally finding courage, finally taking a risk.

But, for me, the two standout stories in this collection are ‘Little Wizard’ and ‘Passenger’. They both follow young men who are struggling to cope with their place in the world, their relationships with women and what it means to be a man. The five stories’ recurring themes are troubled masculinity, punishing poverty and magical thinking, fantasising or catastrophising, as characters reach a crisis point. “Poverty and precarity sneaked up on me in the stories. Poverty takes up so much mental bandwidth. It affects all my characters.” Well, have a good time, she says. And make sure you get something to eat. I’ve told your father, but you know what he’s like.When Church runs up and whips the ball into the net, the stadium erupts and Gareth roars YES, and his father hugs him tight, his stubble bristling Gareth’s cheek. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Originally from Wales, Morris has lived in Dublin for a number of years, where he is editor-at-large at the Stinging Fly. His new collection, Open Up, has the same probing intensity as his debut, but the stories feel riskier, an author opening himself up to new forms and styles with a notable playfulness and ingenuity. Short stories are very different; discussion about short stories as a collective entity is like talking about music and saying I like “songs” A beautiful collection of five short stories that invoke an entire range of emotions in a dazzling, highly conceptual and striking way.