A Faraway Smell of Lemon - Waterstones Exclusive

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The store which Binny finds herself in, is one she would not normally visit. It contains cleaning products. Only cleaning products. Shelves of cleaning products. Lots and lots of cleaning products. Binny and domesticity aren’t the best of friends. This is not her type of store. My favorite character of the seven stories has to be Binny, a forty-seven year old single mother. She is mentioned in both the first story, “The faraway smell of lemon” and the last one, “Trees“. Her live-in partner, Oliver, has just a few days before Christmas – left her… In A Faraway Smell of Lemon, Binny is running from the over-zealous PTA mum (we all know one!) and finds herself in a shop she’d never normally visit. In The Marriage Manual, Alan and Alice try to make their son a gift from a DIY kit and find themselves deconstructing their marriage. In A Boxing Day Ball, a disco at the village hall proves life-changing. The stories are simple, poignant, beautifully told with a gloss of the supernatural like Christmas frosting. I’d had this sitting in my kindle library for I don’t know how long. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and discovered it was a short story, quite apt for the time of year, and indeed, for this extraordinary year!

What I also loved is how clever they were all connected. Some of the characters who had their own story, would even for just briefly appear in the next one, entwining these stories into one beautiful and unique fictional world. I also loved the mysterious girl in red coat which appears in every story, either on a commercial, or a banner or in the garden. Just in time for Christmas, a heartwarming holiday e-original story by Rachel Joyce, the author of the bestselling The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It is Christmas Eve and Binny has just four hours in which to make Christmas happen for her children. But it’s raining, her house is falling apart and she’s just been left by her boyfriend who has taken up with another woman. Darting into a doorway to escape an awkward conversation, Binny finds herself in the kind of shop she’d never normally visit. But in among the shelves, she finds a surprising source of peace. A Faraway Smell of Lemon by Rachel Joyce – eBook DetailsA Snow Garden: Two little boys, dumped with their divorced father for his share of the Christmas holidays and none of them with a clue how to enjoy it. Christmas at the Airport: There's a technical problem at the airport and everything is stranded and a baby is born. It's a modern version of the Christmas story with an added dose of Joyce cosiness. Now the nurse is a nice part for an older woman. She gets a few laughs...But let’s face it, she’s only she only has a few scenes and she’s not Juliet..the actress thinks very carefully about how best to summarize the plot of Romeo and Juliet and then she says, “Well, it’s all about this nurse. She is the award-winning writer of over 30 original afternoon plays and classic adaptations for BBC Radio 4.

There is some terrific humor in these stories as well, which I always love, and as a special surprise, "The Boxing Day Ball" features Maureen, a young girl going to her first dance, and meeting her future husband, Harold Frye. Rachel Joyce is the author of 2 of my favorite books in the past couple of years: "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye", and it's companion novel, "The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey". Both of those books were about normal people trying to live good lives, needing to make connections with others, and trying to do so in sometimes surprising ways. We had once what we can never have again. So why, then, do we behave as if everything we have connected with, everything we have blessed with our loving, should be ours for keeps? It is enough to have tiptoed to that space beyond the skin, beyond our nerve endings, and to have glimpsed things that beforehand we only half knew. In A Snow Garden: Henry, divorced, disconnected from his sons, has the boys for six days over Christmas while Debbie goes on vacation. He has promised Owen, a sweet, innocent ten, and Conor, a sometimes snarky fifteen, snow; he has even, to the amusement of his sister, bought them sleds, at a marked-down price (the weather is balmy, snow is definitely not predicted). Henry is at the point of despair when he sees a snow garden, and then is once again concerned for his sanity.I have to start this review with a humiliating admission - I have not read any of Rachel Joyce's other work. I know this is awful. I have a copy of The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry sat in my TBR pile and for some reason I just have not got round to reading it yet. I intend to rectify this very soon, having read A Snow Garden & Other Stories. Joyce's writing is very clever, she brings the various protagonists fully to life skilfully in the brief span provided by the short story form, and she manages to give us a very clear insight into their experiences and characters through a snapshot of a single moment in their lives. The stories are poignant and bittersweet, with an indefinable air of magic and melancholy about them, whilst at the same time as being totally real and relatable, and very, very moving. I was left affected by each story for a long while afterwards. 'A Faraway Smell of Lemon' and 'A Snow Garden' were my particular favourites and resonated deeply with me for personal reasons, and it is testimony to Joyce's expertise that her writing has managed to connect with her reader in this way in such a short space of time. The other story I enjoyed was the title story, A Snow Garden. A sweet tale of a divorced parent left with his two kids and trying to give them what they want and manage their expectations at the same time - given that they really aren't expecting anything! A bit of magical realism in there, but Joyce actually gives us a decent explanation to go with it which leaves the reader satisfied. PDF / EPUB File Name: A_Faraway_Smell_Of_Lemon_-_Rachel_Joyce.pdf, A_Faraway_Smell_Of_Lemon_-_Rachel_Joyce.epub

This is a collection of short stories from the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The stories are linked with small references to each other and all each day in the Christmas week (though some are clearly different years). In Christmas Day at the Airport: the reader gets all the elements of a nativity scene, but not in the conventional sense. There is indeed a very pregnant young woman (Magda) and her partner, Jo(hanna), three kings (Mrs King and her two daughters), a donkey (among other animals), (shop assistants dressed as) angels, and lambs (fluffy-toy-type). Also six Santas and a choir. Probably not a messiah, though… Perfect’s] unputdownable factor . . . lies in its exploration of so many multilayered emotions. There is the unbreakable bond between mother and son, the fear of not belonging . . . and how love can offer redemption.” —London Evening Standard , on PerfectI really wasn't a fan of this one, which is sad because I usually love Rachel Joyce's story and I was looking forward for a nice warm Christmas read. Out of 7 short stories, I liked only 2 of them - and even those were not fantastically great, but just better than average. Christmas at the Airport: A glitch in the system, travellers stranded and all sorts of lives colliding in the face of a sudden birth... In the foreword to this book, Joyce says, 'We are at the centre of our own stories. And sometimes it is hard to believe that we are not at the centre of other people's. But I love the fact that you can brush past a person with your own story, your own life, so big in your mind and at the same time be a simple passer-by in someone else's. A walk-on part.' This is the theme that binds these stories together - they intersect almost imperceptibly, but the link is there, cemented by one recurring image throughout the book, so the book feels whole and not discordant despite the seven divergent story lines. Rachel has also written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4, including all the Bronte novels. She moved to writing after a long career as an actor, performing leading roles for the RSC, the National Theatre and Cheek by Jowl. In Trees: much to Sal’s annoyance, Oliver agrees to his elderly father’s request to bring trees. It’s New Year’s Eve, his pregnant girlfriend wants to party, but his father has decided he needs to plant twenty trees to atone. He’ll need to borrow his ex’s van, but Binny is kind, and Oliver finds himself wishing for the company and comfort of her home, what used to be his too, before he messed up his life.

There is much to do, much to prepare, much to mend, but it cannot be done in a day and sometimes it is better to do one small thing.” (from “A Faraway Smell of Lemon”) It’s Christmas Eve, and Binny is not prepared. In fact, she wants to fast forward and skip Christmas this year all together. Rachel Joyce, internationally bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Perfect, delivers an unforgettable Christmas story of moving on from lost love, now available exclusively as an e-short.Joyce chooses to write about ordinary and forgotten people, but sometimes her vision of chavvy types doesn’t quite ring true, and when she isn’t being melancholy she’s twee. “Christmas Day at the Airport” was so contrived it made me groan. While I don’t think any of her books are truly great, they’re pleasant, relatable and easy to read. On meeting the shop assistant, Binny discovers that for some people, cleaning can help them de-stress and refocus. This is a small book containing seven short stories which revolve around peripheral characters that were cut from her other works, but whom she has been unable to let go of completely. She describes them as 'making a nuisance of themselves' so she decided to try and quieten them by giving them short stories of their own. I love that idea - the thought that these characters have a life of their own and won't settle until their story has been told.