The Pier Falls
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The Pier Falls
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Narrated by:
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Clare Corbett
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Daniel Weyman
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By:
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Mark Haddon
About this listen
An expedition to Mars goes terribly wrong. A seaside pier collapses. A 30-stone man is confined to his living room. One woman is abandoned on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Another woman is saved from drowning. Two boys discover a gun in a shoebox. A group of explorers find a cave of unimaginable size deep in the Amazon jungle. A man shoots a stranger in the chest on Christmas Eve.
In this first collection of stories by the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon demonstrates two things: first that he is a master of the short form (several of the stories have been longlisted for prizes); second that his imagination is even darker than we had thought.
©2016 Mark Haddon (P)2016 Random House AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
Totally engrossing!
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Very dark
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If you could sum up The Pier Falls in three words, what would they be?
Completely gripping storiesWas this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. But each story is best read in a sitting.Any additional comments?
'Bunny' and 'The Gun' were my favourite stories - the latter one of my favourite stories full stop.An exceptionally good collection
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Astonishingly red and astonishingly bleak!
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Poignant and well observed short stories
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The stories aren't just about disturbing scenarios, however. They explore themes such as loneliness and isolation, particularly within families with remarkable sharpness and visual detail. There are unhappy and broken relationships (Carole returns 'home' from America after such a relationship to help her hostile sister tend their elderly mother who's suffering from dementia - although you feel her mother would have told her daughter she hated her because all she saw in her was Carole's father even if she'd been of sound mind.) There is the present haunted by the inescapable past. Wodwo re-works Gawain and the Green Knight when an armed intruder bursts into an already awful extended family Christmas resulting in violence that will be revenged.
These stories dip in and out of raw social commentary, morality tales and myth, although I must admit that The Island about a princess in a tapestry left me confused. Don't expect anything like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, except perhaps for Haddon's skill at entering into the lives and minds of unusual people in unusual situations. Don't expect to be entertained or your spirits lifted, but be drawn into a network of startling stories you won't forget in a hurry.
Dark, dark, irrevocably dark!
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The stories are most unusual, all dark in some way. Some didn't have endings that made sense, but this was their intention. Very good, very different, I'm glad I downloaded it
Well this was different!
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Well written
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Just a bunch of scenarios
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Captivating short stories
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