I’m starting this week off with a review on the blog tour for Separated From The Sea, here is what it’s about.
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Separated From the Sea is the debut short story collection from award-winning author, Amanda Huggins.
Crossing oceans from Japan to New York and from England to Havana, these stories are filled with a sense of yearning, of loss, of not quite belonging, of not being sure that things are what you thought they were. They are stories imbued with pathos and irony, humour and hope.
Evie meets a past love but he’s not the person she thinks he is; a visit to the most romantic city in the world reveals the truth about an affair; Satseko discovers an attentive neighbour is much more than that; Eleanor’s journey on the London Underground doesn’t take her where she thought it would.
Amazon | Goodreads
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I always love reading short story collections because you never know what you might find. Separated From The Sea was certainly one that took me by surprise, I didn’t expect that I would connect quite as much with the stories as I did.
The stories are set in various locations throughout the world and most have the sea or some form of nature as a common element but what really spoke to me was the little observations of life that turned into impactful moments. Sometimes it was a bit like holding up a mirror and being forced to confront things that I try to avoid about myself, other times it was laughing at finding similarities between the characters and people that I know.
The author manages to weave the story into wonderful images with her beautifully crafted words. There are many destinations that I felt transported to and it did give me a longing to get out of the city. I like that the book features some of the same characters in other stories, gives the stories more of a connection and makes it feel more considered.
It’s quite difficult to narrow down to just a few favourites because there are so many gems in this collection but if pressed I would have to say Enough, Sea Glass, The Last Of Michiko and Michael Secker’s Last Day. It was a hard choice though, there is I think something for everyone, a good mix between the more serious, gritty stories and the lighthearted ones.
It was a pleasure to read this collection and I would definitely pick up another book by Amanda Huggins.
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If you want to hear more about this wonderful book then have a look at the other stops on the tour.
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Mandy Huggins’s work has been published in anthologies, travel guides, text books, and literary magazines, as well as in The Guardian, The Telegraph, Reader’s Digest, Take a Break’s Fiction Feast, Traveller, Mslexia, Wanderlust, and Writers’ Forum.
Her travel writing has won several awards, including the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer Award in 2014, and her short stories are regularly placed and shortlisted in competitions, including Bare Fiction, Fish, InkTears, Cinnamon Press and Retreat West.
A selection of her short fiction is showcased in the InkTears anthology, Death of a Superhero, and her first collection of flash fiction, Brightly Coloured Horses (Chapeltown Books), is now available on Kindle and in paperback.
Mandy’s first full length short story collection, Separated From The Sea, will be published by Retreat West Books in June 2018.
Follow her on Twitter @troutiemcfish
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Retreat West Books is an independent press publishing paperback books and ebooks.
Founder, Amanda Saint, is a novelist and short story writer. She’s also a features journalist writing about environmental sustainability and climate change. So all Retreat West Books publications take advantage of digital technology advances and are print-on-demand, in order to make best use of the world’s finite resources.
Retreat West Books is an arm of Amanda’s creative writing business, Retreat West, through which she runs fiction writing retreats, courses and competitions and provides editorial services.
Initially started to publish the anthologies of winning stories in the Retreat West competitions, Retreat West Books is now open for submissions for short story collections, novels and memoirs. Submission info can be found here.
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