John Saul - Call It Tender

The sky was gold streaks and white streaks, an expensive look, stormy. Diagonals ruled. Under the streaks came blue woodland in bar shapes, sliced up by firebreaks. Somewhere there my brother Ray lived."

As Rivers Flow

Assumin'," she adds between kisses, "you will be lookin' your best as we get outta here. I don't want us goin' someplace and you arrivin' like a flower."

Call It Tender

Father said he would put his kettle on. Shuffling to the kitchen he picked up the phone. Put it down. Came back and sat down; wondered why no water boiled."

As Rivers Flow

Miss Heidi said I could write in my diary Miss Heidi introduced me to sex, there was a broom cupboard on the third floor and we were to go there straight away and we did."

The Most Serene Republic

Your time roaming is over, no more wild praries, no lullaby in the bushes not far from Kenwood, no viola in the corner."

even the butterfly must endure the storm

often witty and playful ... the short story is not only alive but being reinvigorated in excitingly diverse ways"

The Times

The stories in Call It Tender are devoted to love, hope, nostalgia; to life in its precariousness, absurdities and joys. Told with the author's characteristic wit and sense of atmosphere—set in Mallorca, Berlin, Wiltshire and Suffolk, Mannheim and New Jersey—they tell of lovers meeting, of how a prisoner struggles, a forester grows curious, a patient survives, a girl falls and falls through space. As a wind blows off the North Sea, a house in London burns, or the Eiffel Tower sparkles in the night, the reader will be able to appreciate why John Saul’s fiction has been called funny, beguiling, provocative.

... powerful, moving, ambitious writing ... beautiful, tightly written, short stories ... their impact stayed with me long after I finished reading"

Transmission magazine

Call It Tender is published by Salt Publishing
www.saltpublishing.com