Gods and Angels

A powerful collection of stories from the critically-acclaimed, prize-winning author David Park.''One of the shrewdest observers of the way we live now'' Independent''Park is an excellent writer; psychologically astute, lyrically unflinching'' Telegraph''He writes prose of gravity and grace'' GuardianGods and Angels locates, with pinpoint accuracy, the quiet but deeply charged moments in life that can define a person.A seventeen-year-old boy visits his estranged mother on Boxing Day in a grey seaside town; a university lecturer who is learning to swim falls in with a group of older men who inhabit a very different world; a detective breaks into his former home to spy on his estranged family; a couple reflect on twenty-five years of marriage under the Northern Lights; and an old man volunteering in a charity shop forms a tender bond with a young single mother.______________________''David Park is one of my favourite writers. This beautiful, nuanced, perceptive collection of stories is a considerable achievement. Somehow he writes with both grace and muscularity, and every page resounds with the sort of truthfulness that stirs deep recognitions in the reader. This is important, committed work from a writer who knows what he''s about, but Park is also such a pleasure to read. I loved this book'' Joseph O''Connor