I can’t help wondering if the title of this collection of short stories is an homage to a short story written by Agatha Christie. The author, Tessa Hadley, lives in Wales, where Christie often visited her family. Tessa Hadley has written three short story collections and eight novels. Her writing focuses on family and is realistic, hence, rather somber, as the title of this collection may indicate.

The first story in the book focuses on two young girls doing their best to take care of their distracted mother. In their growing helplessness, they go to extraordinary lengths to keep an intact, albeit fractured family. Another story deals with a woman who is caregiver to her mother during the pandemic. Their life together is naturally circumscribed by this situation. What begins with a casual observation of a neighboring caregiver, grows into an obsession.

In all these stories, we are close up to people with ordinary lives of quiet desperation. It is evident that the writer knows these stories and her characters quite well.