We Don't Know What We're Doing is the title of the much-anticipated collection of short stories due from Welsh-born author and Dublin resident, Thomas Morris. Faber & Faber will publish in August
Mostly set in Set in Caerphilly in South Wales, the stories range over a familiar contemporary scene, like the young video shop assistant exchanges the home comforts of one mother-figure for a fleeting sexual encounter with another.
In another of Morris’s stories, a brother and sister find themselves at the bottom of a coal mine with a Japanese tourist. Or there is the one about a Welsh stag on a debauched weekend in Dublin who confesses to a disturbing truth about himself.
In another of these engaging tales, a twice-widowed pensioner tries to persuade the lovely Mrs Morgan to be his date at the town's summer festival.
Faber & Faber declare that Morris's debut “reveals its treasures in unexpected ways, offering vivid and moving glimpses of the lost, lonely and bemused.
"By turns poignant, witty, tender and bizarre - these entertaining stories detail the lives of people who know where they are, but don't know what they're doing. This is the work of a young writer with a startlingly fresh voice, an uncanny ear for dialogue and a broad emotional range."
Thomas Morris is current editor of the (Irish) The Stinging Fly literary magazine.
