Same Same But Different

A daring collection written in response to lockdown

Small but perfectly formed stories from the time of Corona virus.  Striking— wonderful, thought-provoking short stories

Be it loneliness, love, loss, or the quiet comfort one can find in being alone, these stories touch on what it means to be human, and not only in the grip of a pandemic. The literary equivalent of a box of Roses (but thankfully without the universally maligned “coffee one”), this collection has something for every reader.

18 well-chosen stories, loosely based on the idea of solitude, explore loss, loneliness and love, and head from the wilds of the Northern Rockies with an ailing father and an intrepid grieving daughter (Leadfall by D. W. Wilson) to the cable-tangled, neon-jagged streets of Bangkok where, in Stephen S. Thompson’s titular story, a traveller watches the world

Same Same but Different isn’t a collection about the pandemic but explores what the experience has awoken. These stories about solitude are relevant. Felicity Marsh’s If I Only Had One Story to Read uses Rapunzel is a contemplation of isolation. Alison Moore studies intransitive verbs in Ooderwald, a story about learning to teach English, asks what loss really means. The anthology acknowledges the appeal of short stories is more than escapism, they fascinate us by providing an opportunity to see how other people think. AL Kennedy utterly understands this, Wow is like crawling into someone’s head. It’s not always comfortable (why should it be?) but this it’s powerful ‘Wow, we could talk about the world, current affairs, family affairs…Wow we could talk about why my mouth tastes of the dark and so forth…Nobody wants to talk about the world. It’s unmentionable.’  The story pulses with raw humanity shielded by cynicism. , Same Same but Different is a book for right now, Mikka Haugaard’s curated a collection that reminds us what it is to be human.