Bold, gritty and blackly comic, Michael Stewart's new collection of
short fiction, Four Letter Words, explores twin contemporary urban
dystopias: work and home.
A book in two halves:
Work explores what paid employment is for many people now:
deadening, grinding and underpaid. A barmaid who has to put up with
being sexually abused as part of her job, a sex worker who finds out
just how far she will go to raise the money she needs to see her son, a
painter and decorator who only sees white, a beggar who goes too far,
and an office worker who discovers his boss has a skeleton in his
closet.
Home explores dysfunctional domestic settings. A single mum who has
to hand over her child to a violent ex-boyfriend, a woman driven through
loneliness to form a relationship with her vacuum cleaner, and an
unusual coupling between an advertising exec and a homeless girl. For
some home offers little respite from the toil and tyranny of work.
Stylish and unsettling with a seam of black comedy running throughout
the collection, Four Letter Words is a baker's dozen of modern urban
noir that offers responses to a number of contemporary concerns such as
homelessness, addiction and sexual exploitation.
