Caravan Thieves

Most of these vivid and unsettling stories are rooted in apparently everyday lives and situations, but suddenly become surreal or disturbing - reading them feels sometimes as though you're walking along in the real world and suddenly step off an edge into a void, where rules of gravity and normality have disappeared but life carries on ... They're full of Woodward's trademark mix of humour, pathos, dysfunctional families and disappointed lives, as well as dazzling moments of illumination, perfect imagery, beautiful writing and intimations of mortality (in 'A Ford Mondeo' and 'Gardening'). But this time there's infidelity ('Pangea Ultima', 'Milk', 'Cleopatra', 'Firemen'), curdled sex ('Firemen' again, and 'Chicken Pox'), strange jobs in kitchens and sandwich bars which involve betrayal and revenge (as in 'Hygiene' or 'Strawberries'). And the title comes from 'Rape' where a caravan (a nice Fleetwood Marauder) seems to have been lifted from its regular berth at Glenmore Caravan Park in the middle of the night to land it and its occupants in a field in the middle of nowhere... which leads to unaccustomed and violent fantasies.