In Leone Ross’s luminous short stories – ranging from richly extended stories to intense pieces of flash fiction, set between Jamaica and Britain – anything can happen. Ross’s setting may be familiar and her characters recognisable, but these stories take a magical/fantastical turn that dramatically transforms the way we see. Other stories draw us straight into the world of the fantastical or the implausible with such meticulous and concrete detail that we accept these as reality: a wife returns from the dead and their marital bickering resumes, a headless girl barely lifts an eyebrow among her school companions, a security guard collects discarded hymens and uncovers a deeper empathy for women.
At the heart of the stories is Leone Ross’s refusal to accept any boundary between the erotic and the most inventive kind of pornography. There is a seriousness here too, in the author’s intentions: a vision of the fluidity of the person, the inequalities of the body politic – from the deaths of black people at the hands of the police, to the deep shifts that signal subtle changes in the nature of capitalism.
This is a richly varied, witty and entertaining collection whose frankness may sometimes tickle, sometimes shock; but always engages the intellect and the heart.
Shortlisted for Salt Publishing's Scott Prize.
About the Author:
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry. She was born in England and grew up in Jamaica. Her first novel, All The Blood Is Red was long listed for the Orange Prize, and her new collection of short stories, Come Let Us Sing Anyway, was released in the summer to wide critical acclaim and ranges from psychological drama, to flash fiction, erotica, magic realism to horror and. Leone works as a Senior Lecturer in the Creative Writing department at Roehampton University in London.
Come Let Us Sing Anyway
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