Your Father Sends His Love is an interesting collection of short stories about parental love and conflict. There is deep emotion here, which is often unspoken, but filters from the pages to prickle the senses of the reader. I raced through this book of 12 stories in a 24 hour period, finding it hard to put down and keen to start the next one. Each is quite different, even in style, but all held my attention being wonderfully engaging.Stuart Evers acute observation of the human side of his charac...

W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Your Father Sends His Love, in exchange for an honest review.This collection of short stories has the common thread of the parental and child relationship, both positive and negative. Your Father Sends His Love shows a broad spectrum of characters and situations: from the father who avenged the beating his son received because he is gay, to the grandfather enjoying his grown granddaughter's visit, to the father coping wi...

Technically very competent writing with the ability to draw in the reader but falling short of delivering endings that are satisfying and, sometimes understandable - with the exception of the title story which is a stand-out piece of work: clearly based on the dead British comic, Bob Monkhouse. Too many of the observations in this collection are detached and lack warmth. The effect is to create a sense that Evers finds humans to be somewhat distasteful and that somehow he stands apart with the r...

A beautiful collection of short stories with a central theme of the complicated relationships between parents and their children. At times heartbreaking, at others life-affirming, and always stunning captured in the wonderful evocative prose of Stuart Evers.Personal favourites were 'Lakelands' about a father's love for his gay son, and the lengths a parent will go to to protect their child and 'Frequencies' about a new Dad at home with his infant son, thinking about his own relationship with his...

My problem with short story collections, however good the individual stories might be, is that they all seem to merge into one in my mind and I can never remember much about them. This collection is different though, and so emotional and moving are some of the stories, that I’m pretty sure they are going to linger. In spare and calm prose, with acute observation of human frailty and a deep perception of human weaknesses, Evers writes compellingly. My own favourite story was “Something Else to Sa...

A collection of emotions. Written with grace.A book to read over and over again.

There are some really good stories in this collection, all on the theme of family. I often struggle with short story collections to name specific ones that resonated, but felt that ‘Sundowners’ and ‘These Are The Days’ were the standouts in this collection.Some of the stories though, I felt could have done with a bit more development just to allow me to work out the full focus, as I wasn’t able to connect with some of those characters.Overall an interesting selection.

I'm quite unlucky, I think, in that a pet peeve of mine in short story collections is actually what the publishing industry aims for. I'm talking about tightly themed collections. I mean, they're great if there's a point, if it adds something, but it annoys me when it's just a way of saying "look, they're all so much about the same thing, it's almost a novel!"I came for STORIES, goddamn it. Different stories, tones, subjects, etc. See what the author can do, what range she has.So (rant over), I

Full review here: https://salboho.wordpress.com/2015/04...'These stories catalogue human error in a variety of unexpected ways from the development of moral consciousness in adolescents to the complete abandonment of it in adult life. All of the characters are isolated by and preoccupied with their personal issues. Whether their problems are outwardly visible or subtly suggested by Evers, there is the prevailing sense that introspection is the common driving force behind their mistakes.'-Salboho...

Your Father Sends His Love is a collection of twelve stories that explore the complex relationships between children and their parents. What emerges from Stuart Evers writing does indeed capture this complexity in all its different shades and colours.There is the vengeance wreaked by a father on behalf of his son, with an appalling twist in the plot. There is also gentleness, as a grandparent coaxes his technology-addicted granddaughter into using text the old-fashioned way, by writing letters.

Great collection. The title story is breathtaking, outrageous, funny and depressing and the real standout here. It's a tale based on Bob Monkhouse and his strange life, his devotion to himself, to the detriment of the rest of his family, particularly his drug addicted son and long suffering wives, but is not without sympathy for the TV presenter/comedian once ubiquitous on our screens. Five big stars. Other stories too deserve 5: another one about the business of comedy featuring the son of some...

A well-written literary short story collection. The author has a strong voice and keeps it interesting by switching time and perspective within the same story, but always making it clear by the end. Sometimes I felt like the stories, and what wasn't written, went over my head, but all were easy to read.The most memorable stories for me were Lakelands, about a gay boy coming out to his father and an act of retribution; Wings, about a middle-aged women who gets wings tattooed on her back in honour...

I read books of short stories in between novels, most often because I’m waiting for one to arrive at my library that’s on hold. Therefore, took me a long time to get through this book, and it seems like the ones at the end of the book or the ones that stuck with me the most. Perhaps, this is because I read it over a long period time, and I’ve just forgotten the ones earlier in the book. The last story, does not deal with fathers, but with the mother. It is sad, and you don’t know it’s going to b...

Your Father sends his love is a collection of twelve short stories about parental (or in one case Grandparental) relationships. It's not all rosy stories of happy endings but the gritty highs and lows that people experience in relationships. From a fathers loss to a fathers defense of his child and more, Evers seeks the best and worst, the most emotive and personal elements these relationships bring.I found that something in these collection was missing for me. I wanted more.....I didn't feel li...

Very uneven

I'd rate this 3.5 stars.Maybe it's because the two-year anniversary of my father's death is approaching in a few weeks that first attracted me to reading Stuart Evers' new story collection. But while certainly many of these stories focus on the relationships between fathers and their children (or, in one case, grandchildren), there are stories which focus on other emotional connections and relationships as well.Among my favorites in the collection were: "These Are the Days," in which an elderly

All of the stories in 'Your Father Sends His Love' deal with fathers and sons, their relationships or lack of one. Some of them really spoke to me and others just didn't hit the mark.The first story, 'Lakelands", was very poignant. A boy and his father move frequently because the dad is in construction and many of his jobs fall through. With a stolen phone, the son takes photos of all his father's work sites and the people he works with. Eventually, the son comes out to his father and his father...

"It is a curse of old age to one day assume you have said everything, and the next assume the opposite."Of all the stories in this collection 'There are Days' is my favorite. It doesn't require a long drawn out explanation of what happened to make Ben's son so angry and resentful towards him. That estrangement becomes a guest of it's own as soon as his granddaughter Anna visits (which he embraces happily) and her father finds out. Maybe he was uncommunicative or hard on his son- whose to say, bu...

Family DysfunctionThe dozen stories in this collection are loosely connected by the idea of family, but most of the families have troubles. The title piece, the longest in the book at 53 pages, features a "television personality," a clown who had his brief try at Hamlet then sank to famous mediocrity as the perpetual host of game shows. All this is background to his failure with his son, who takes to drugs, and eventually concocts a poetic revenge against his father. A father and son who barely

“Your Father Sends His Love” is a collection of short stories that probe family relationships, particularly those of fathers and sons. Each story is distinctive, but they are all filled with powerful emotions. It can be difficult for authors, particularly debut authors, to convey emotions by showing rather than telling, but Mr. Evers was brilliant in this regard. I enjoyed all the stories, but I especially appreciated “Lakeland” and “Something Else To Say.” This is a great debut and will be a tr...