A boy watches the sinister goings on of an urban estate. A computer specialist in a hospital witnesses a disturbing incident on the roof. The crime career for 'Hot Little Danny' - a teenage tearaway with a teacher girlfriend - is inexorably upward. Infidelity, old friendships and passions haunt the drifting lives of Beard's characters, fuelled by drugs and alcohol, dogged by uncertain employment. You Don't Have to Say is downhearted but finds warmth in people on the edges of the urban landscape, skewering adversity with uncanny empathy and insight .
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Book Description
Alan Beard's long-awaited second short story collection follows his groundbreaking debut collection Taking Doreen out of the Sky, which received glowing tributes in reviews in 1997 and won the author the prestigious Tom Gallon Award.
About the Author
Born in Tewkesbury, Alan Beard, married with teenage daughters, has lived in Birmingham for 25 years. He works as a librarian for the Birmingham City University and is secretary of a successful writers group. His stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and in many literary magazines and anthologies in England and USA.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By PP Prong
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Every so often I come across a little back-water gem of a book that stakes out a territory in fiction for ordinary lives lived in ordinary places. The TLS has likened Alan Beard to Raymond Carver because of the way he takes the mundane and invests it with universal currency. Certainly the clipped nature of his prose sometimes justifies such a comparison, but there is more to these stories than shining up the non-descript and saying more by saying less. These are fourteen cracking little reads full of colour and predicament.
By Raz Palter
Format:Paperback
This collection of stories is concerned with ordinary people who are either on the fringes, or in the mainstream trying to make sense of miserable lives. Some stories are shocking, others poignant. There are bleak visions of inner city life and personal disappointment, yet there's warmth and occasionally hope here too. All the stories are well (and economically) written. A couple are quite brilliant.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.0 out of 5 stars
1 review
4.0 out of 5 stars
Aptly captures the urban dweller's struggle against anonymity
8 Mar 2012
By Aregee
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
After losing my first copy of this book on a plane home from Barcelona, I gave up on the airline's lost-and-found and bought another. I hope the copy I lost was read by someone, anyone, it certainly is a worthwhile read.
The leitmotiv that seems to bind the short stories in this collection is the first-person narrator, a mostly broken person, sometimes male, sometimes female, assembled from disjointed memories to which he or she clings while attempting to negotiate some form of peace in the ceaseless eddies of mundane urban existence. The world described here is a dark place, joys are few and far between, and though the stream-of-consciousness narration highlights the familiarity of it all, alienation is never far. Despite it all, memories of happier times shine on, and like insects struggling to find home the characters are drawn by this beacon. The writing rests on short swaths of description, engagingly assembled, that deftly evoke the passage of time. Often poignant while totally avoiding any sentimentality, the stories exude the dogged human effort of people seeking out other people, striving not to be alone.
An admirable plea for the short story format, which, through a focus on concentrating events and experiences into a dense package, makes things possible that long format don't.
The leitmotiv that seems to bind the short stories in this collection is the first-person narrator, a mostly broken person, sometimes male, sometimes female, assembled from disjointed memories to which he or she clings while attempting to negotiate some form of peace in the ceaseless eddies of mundane urban existence. The world described here is a dark place, joys are few and far between, and though the stream-of-consciousness narration highlights the familiarity of it all, alienation is never far. Despite it all, memories of happier times shine on, and like insects struggling to find home the characters are drawn by this beacon. The writing rests on short swaths of description, engagingly assembled, that deftly evoke the passage of time. Often poignant while totally avoiding any sentimentality, the stories exude the dogged human effort of people seeking out other people, striving not to be alone.
An admirable plea for the short story format, which, through a focus on concentrating events and experiences into a dense package, makes things possible that long format don't.
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