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These twenty-two cleverly linked stories, written over two decades, trace a life from childhood to middle age. Beginning in Lancashire in the ‘60s and '70s, they follow a young girl as she becomes aware of what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a lover and a woman in a family where the relationships are constantly changing. From a disappeared clutch of curlew’s eggs to the last piece of furniture left standing in a home, these bleak and funny stories bolster what is lost into poignant narratives; told with lyricism, economy and wit, they are observed with the unflinching eye of an incisive witness. Most of them carry an insidiously discomforting charge. She writes about the banalities of daily life, but not for easy comedy. Observing the small things that are significant to people, she shows how her characters are essentially alone. NICHOLAS CLEE The Guardian on Family Connections; She’s like a female Alan Bennett, such is the power of her observation. ZOE KING on Family Connections; It’s the polished laconic storytelling - and the way this combines with the subject matter, which is often profoundly sad, even painful - but never flat, never gloomy, never depressing. Chrissie Gittins has a real voice and it comes out with the apparent effortlessness which is the mark of finished writing. HELEN DUNMORE on Family Connections; Chrissie Gittins is a real writer with a bleak, accurate and often very funny take on the drab lives most of us lead. Above all she understands the brutal economy you need for a really successful short story… NIGEL WILLIAMS on Family Connections; By turns incisive and funny. Not unlike Oscar Wilde, Professor Heger’s Daughter is a feast for the mind. ROBERT PEAKE in Poetry Salzburg Review.
