If you want to write well, you must read, so the saying goes. What a joy then, to be able to read and review Stroud-based writer Chloe Turner’s collection of short stories, Witches Sail in Eggshells.

This expertly observed debut collection of short stories reads between the lines of life and explores how we love and lose, then find ourselves and others again.  From an hilarious yet uncomfortable child’s birthday party where the past is laid bare for all to see – yet only seen by some – to the meeting of two women who have loved the same man, to the horror of environmental catastrophe, all stories are told with a melancholic humour that packs a powerful punch.  An example of Turner’s excellent ability to find humour in a sad situation is cleverly explored in Waiting for the Runners in which a mother waiting for her son to finish a cross-country race bumps into the woman who stole her husband. The stooge in the story is Mrs Harris, the PE teacher: Mrs Harris’s Lycra thighs emerged from the shrubbery like purple hams brings brevity to the sadness, the reader having just learned of a terrible sorrow brought upon the narrator years before. Turner does this very well. We feel the pain of each woman – of wife and mistress, of their discomfort and disconnectedness, and yet the story ends with a sigh, a release, that is positive and uplifting. Such juxtaposition of emotions runs through all these stories, often taking the reader by surprise – and that is the magic of Turner’s writing.  In the intriguingly entitled The House With Three Stories That Might Be Five, an unusual but not implausible story unfolds, and this, like the others, has some beautiful observations casually dropped in to the narrative that make you catch your breath. Turner describes Cathy, a group member on a tour, succinctly with a simple line ‘I’ve been alone so long, sometimes I wonder if my reflection might leave me,’ and you feel Cathy’s loneliness like a sting.
The honesty in the writing cuts straight to the core of the story.

In Show Me What You’re Made Of, Turner takes a darker turn, leaving the reader wondering.  Creepiness at it’s best.

There are similar themes running through many of these stories – nature, especially, is given a good chance to be seen, but so too danger and menace, humour, melancholy; many stories have a good helping of stoicism which shines a gentle and up-beat light on a human condition which Chloe Turner captures so well. Insightful, resonant, and emotionally touching in different ways, this collection of stories is well worth a read.

Available from Reflex Press, £8.99