The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books: Selected Short Stories

Introduced by Giles Gordon. Elspeth Davie is one of Scotland’s finest and most underrated short-story writers. Her prose style is as clear and occasionally unnerving as that of Muriel Spark, yet her work reveals a gentler and more compassionate, but no less penetrating eye for the beauty and the strangeness of the daily human condition. This wide-ranging collection of the very best of Elspeth Davie’s short fiction offers an important reassessment of a wonderful writer. ‘Exceptionally powerful . . . this is a most impressive collection, a work of genuine imagination. And Mrs Davie’s measured, subtly cadenced prose is a pleasure to read.’ Observer ‘Mrs Davie commands a beautifully clear prose style that she can intensify when necessary to touch the hem of poetry.’ Edinburgh Evening News ‘ Shows the skill and originality of the writer in articulating and devising images for human doubts and ambiguities.’ Herald