Not a drop to drink (by Patsy Collins)

(Amazon UK link)

I had finished one book on my Kindle, read/skimmed another one, and wanted something fairly short to read for the last hour or so of the flight. It was clear from my lengthy list of downloaded books that the short story collection ‘Not a Drop to Drink’ was not very long; and an advantage of short stories is that it’s easy to stop reading at the end of any of them. I knew of Patsy Collins from some online forums, and had acquired this volume which was offered free as a taster to her extensive short story collections.

The first story is quite hard-hitting, featuring a young man called Mike. We see him trembling outside a pub, wondering if he will be able to go in. We don’t know why, but the story moves straight into a flashback of his former heavy drinking, moving on to the stresses it caused to his wife, as he remained firmly in denial. The writing is excellent, and this difficult issue is covered in a way that works well. The ending is entirely satisfactory too, as we learn, at last, why exactly he’s feeling so nervous.

The second story, ‘Don’t Touch the Water’ was much darker, in a slightly spooky way, and while, again, it was very well written, I found it disturbing rather than enjoyable. I liked the third story much better - it was a tad complicated, and as I was tired I had to go back and re-read some sections to make sense of it. But I thought it a very encouraging read.

Two further stories are about drinking, written in different ways; the author is clearly knowledgeable about the problems of alcohol out of control, and writes sensitively on this topic. The second of them is very short, but poignant. There’s another complex but gentle love story as well, which I also enjoyed. The first six stories are really character-based rather than having significant amounts of plot, but that’s what all the best short stories are, in my view, and this makes an interesting collection from that point of view.

However the last chapter, ‘Love Potion’, has a distinct plot rather than having any real character development, and I found it very dark. I had guessed some of the outcome, but not exactly how it was going to end… and was then most disappointed to find that it was in fact the last story in the book, as the Kindle read amount was only showing about 55%. The rest of the book is adverts for Patsy Collins’ other books - novels and short stories. Fair enough, as it’s a free ebook, but I’d have preferred this short collection to end on a more positive note.

Still, it filled the bill perfectly as an ebook I could finish in less than an hour. Certainly recommended as an introduction to Patsy Collins’ writing.

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