22 short short stories; 22 not so perfect lives, where bird watchers come out at night, couples perform love surgery, and a woman is throwing up animals.
The extraordinary is everywhere, but an unsettling familiarity pervades.
Nik Perring's brilliant debut collection demonstrates the underestimated powers of brevity. Intricately crafted and filled with dark humour, his 22 stories examine the conundrums and contradictions of human relationships, and ask us what it is to be human at all.
***
Not So Perfect is published by Roast Books and is available from all good book stores.
Click here to buy from Amazon and here to buy if you're outside the UK
PRAISE FOR NOT SO PERFECT
An unforgettable assortment of wonky connections that glitter with truthfulness, that spill out ache, that make me nod my head and whisper, yes.
- Caroline Smailes, author of 'Like Bees to Honey'.
Playful,
subversive, poetic and smart, Nik Perring's stories are gems. Every one of them.
- 3:AM
Magazine
Nik Perring's moving and imaginative flash fictions
capture whole lives in just a glimpse, a character, a snatch of dialogue, and a
few perfectly chosen details. These short, short stories are so full of life.
Nik Perring's many gifts as a writer include a rich imagination and a
quirky sense of humour married to great tenderness. In 'Not So Perfect' he uses these skills to
great effect as he explores those fractured moments at which we are most
vulnerable. This marvellous collection resonates with a surreal impishness,
exploring with a wry smile the often unfathomable complexities that underpin
our relationships. He offers no answers, but demands that we look again.
And again. In so doing he greatly
enriches those who read him.
In Not So Perfect, Nik Perring pinpoints those moments in his characters' lives that everyone experiences, the points at which we all spit fire, we fade into nothingness, that instance we've all found ourselves lobbing grenades at defenseless farmers. While these notions are ridiculously fantastic, Perring's smooth style makes them all seem real, as much a part of us as sitting in the garden and having tea. Perring is a writer whose talent expands beyond his word count in this intriguing debut.
- Michael
Czyzniejewski, author of Elephants in Our Bedroom.
Don't be
fooled by the title, this collection of stories rubs shoulders with perfect
storytelling on numerous occasions. Nik Perring's unique mix of freewheeling
surrealism and the grit & grime of very real, scarring and wounding
experiences produces a suddenness and impact that is stunning.
In Nik Perring's wistful universe, tinged equally
with regret and hope, fabulous beings rub shoulders with the meek and ordinary;
infinite possibilities are glimpsed in mundane settings. In short, anything can
happen and often does.
- R.N. Morris, author of A Razor Wrapped in Silk.
