Some New Ambush

Carys's stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and widely published in magazines and anthologies. She won the 2010 Society of Authors' Olive Cook Award, the 2011 Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize and a 2013 Northern Writers' Award, and has been shortlisted and longlisted for many other prizes, including the Wales Book of the Year, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the William Trevor/ Elizabeth Bowen Short Story Prize.

Already known for its poetry, Salt is developing an ever-stronger short-story list as well. The 15 pieces in Carys Davies's darkly funny and unsettling collection usually begin with "quite small things", only to edge gently into an emotional abyss in dank Welsh towns, airless Victorian parlours or mouldering libraries. The half-hidden passions of "Ugly Sister" could be a lost slice of Dylan Thomas, while the ousted Latin teacher of "Historia Calamatitum Mearum" has an Atwood-esque prickly wit that surfaces elsewhere. Arrivals and departures often trigger crises -- but then, as "Metamorphosis" puts it, "Take-off and landing are the most dangerous times" -- Boyd Tonkin The Independent The stories move seamlessly between the familiar and the surreal, between reality and fantasy, sanity and madness… The attention is focused as through a magnifying glass and we are hooked, drawn into an imaginary world of which we wish to know more… her spare, concise, clear style is ideally suited to a genre in which every word must earn its keep. -- Hazel Watson Book Club Reviews -- Bromley local meeting