Frail Little Embers

LoveReading Says

With Frail Little Embers, storyteller and poet Fija Callaghan presents her debut short story collection, and what a collection it is. Twenty-one vignettes of hope and kindness — and more besides — that whisk you away to varied contexts that feel both real and enchanted, through characters who feel both familiar and uncanny.

Here we experience the magic of everyday kindnesses and brewing of emotional storms in “Temperance in a Teacup”, and “Spinning Sugar”, in which a woman sells delicious remedies in her La Confiserie des Rêves sweet shop. 

Meanwhile, “To the Waters and the Wild” spins an enchanting selkie story of children raised by a woman who “could not bear children of her own, but somehow she ended up with two — one born of the wind and waves, and one born of her husband’s touch on another woman’s skin”.

Then there’s “Dear Audrey”, an unexpected, darkly comic tale told through a succession of letters to and from an agony aunt, while “Running with Wolves” — an absorbing riff on Little Red Riding Hood — sees Red’s mother cocoon her in suffocating rules, until she doesn't, compelling Red to heed sage advice: “The forest folk, they understand that home is something you carry around inside of you. Home is a state of being”.

Highly readable, through its delicate interweaving of the ordinary with the enchanted, Frail Little Embers is a delight to dip into to find joy that transcends the everyday.

Joanne Owen

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