{"product_id":"dancing-on-the-outskirts-book-shena-mackay-9780349007038","title":"Dancing On the Outskirts","description":"Here is a wonderful collection of short stories by the writer known for 'the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights' - Guardian.  Shena Mackay, who first came to fame before the age of twenty with two novellas, is the doyenne of the short form.  In this volume of previously uncollected stories - including those read on radio - she constantly surprises with a view of the ordinary world that is not at all ordinary.  A grasshopper determinedly takes up residence on a bathroom ceiling; a gecko hiding in a cupboard brings a strange sort of luck; a woman spies from a distance two older women friends after many long years and a memory of how they gallopedin the playground as Starlight Blaze and Pepperpot plays sweetly, suddenly in her mind; pigs are swaddled in blankets, looking like babies in shawls; luggage is packed with youthful hopes and ideals.  She observes how people rub along and reveals the best and worst of us all: a disgruntled schoolboy and his hapless teacher conquer mountains and their antipathy for each other; a girl with green eyes and iridescent hair discovers revenge; a race to be the best mushroom-picker creates only losers; and rotten apples, in the right pair of hands, make a loving pie.    Shena Mackay is a generous and keen-eyed chronicler of the everyday; she deftly brings wisdom and humour to the worlds she creates, worlds that we suddenly, excitingly see anew.   She is an utterly original writer.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49565450699025,"sku":"GOR007216518","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49633026801937,"sku":"GOR011553433","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51372263309585,"sku":"GOR009741959","price":10.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0349007039.jpg?v=1751443547","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/dancing-on-the-outskirts-book-shena-mackay-9780349007038","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}