Friday, January 16, 2009

Scott Pack reviews Balancing

I'm pretty chuffed by a review by Scott Pack of Balancing on the Edge of the World. He says:
Most of the stories in this impressive collection are firmly rooted in reality. Domestic situations. Families. Marriage. The relationships between friends and neighbours. I often think that these are risky subject areas as they are ones that every reader will be familiar with and therefore more likely to pick up on elements that ring false.
They'd struggle to do that here as Baines perfectly captures the tone and cadence of everyday life. She finds and plucks out important and remarkable moments from the otherwise ordinary. It is quite a skill.
He goes on to say that he likes the more experimental stories best, and could have done with more, which is interesting to me, as when I was putting the collection together I left out some of my experimental stories, as my impression was that realist stories are more popular (and would sell better!).
On Wednesday Scott will be generously hosting the next leg of my virtual tour with the book, Around the Edges of the World. I don't yet know what he's going to ask me...!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It'll be interesting and thought provoking, in any case: look forward to reading it!

Tania Hershman said...

Very nice review, I am looking forward to your next book tour stop too!