Jigs and Reels

The quirky tales in Joanne Harris' first collection of short stories, Jigs and Reels, can best be summed up in two words: malevolent and mischievous. As with many of her full-length novels, Harris manages to cleverly combine ordinary--even humdrum--situations and characters with the extraordinary and the unexpected. Tales with a twist indeed.

Harris lets her formidable imagination run riot in Jigs and Reels. This is a rich and wondrous Pandora's box of the odd, the strange, the weird and the downright wicked. Many of her protagonists wreak satisfying revenge on the unsuspecting, in both comical and cringingly gory fashion.

Long enough to get your teeth into, but short enough to read in a flash of the eye, these 22 stories are startlingly different--from pensioners with a penchant for Manolos, to a magical cookbook that bites back; from school reunions with a difference to adventure games taken seriously. And what characters pop out of their slender pages, as large and as deeply rounded as in any novel. Ladies who breakfast at Tesco's, with dark secrets to mull over; limbless swimmers who fall dangerously in love, honeymooners who fall prey to the aphrodisiac qualities of fish, authors whose long-forgotten, half-finished novels come back to haunt them and lottery winners who bet on the ultimate, impossible odds.

In her introduction, Harris says she finds the process of short-story writing slow and difficult and accepts that success is never guaranteed. In truth, not every tale here works, but when it does, it is stunning--and in the spirit of one of her literary heroes, Ray Bradbury--lingers teasingly in the sub-conscious.

Joanne Harris is an anarchic storyteller, delighting in taking her reader by surprise and leaving them reeling. --Carey Green

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Mixed Bag - Rated
A very mixed bag of short stories, from very good ones to poor ones. An attempted mix of styles too, so you might be surprised at the content. The best probably was 'Breakfast At Tesco's' and the worst 'The G-SUS Gene'.

Eccentric, eclectic, in places excellent - Rated
As a newcomer to the work of Joanne Harris (with nothing but the film of "Chocolat" to guide me), I was drawn to "Jigs and Reels" as an easy introduction to one of Yorkshire's most distinctive modern authors. I'm a sucker fo a good short story and this enjoyable collection has something for everyone.

The 22 short stories in this collection cover a wide range of subject matter. Harris's writing style is un-fussy, intimate and easy to get into, and she has a knack for the occasional killer one-liner. The style is wryly humorous, with a subtle undercurrent of social comment beneath the character studies which form the bulk of the book. Her plots derive from an eclectic range of sources, with something for everybody. Opener "Faith and Hope Go Shopping" was a disappointment for me, but its superior-quality-chick-lit style and its setting in the world of the more mature lady will make it a winner for those who lap up the short stories in women's magazines. "Auto-da-fe" and "Last Train to Dogtown" are aimed at a more masculine market, and carry their punch well. "Hello, Goodbye", "The Spectator" and "A Place in the Sun" are vehicles for Harris to make a few barbed comments about the cult of celebrity, the media's hysteria over paedophiles, and the glamorisation of plastic surgery, and make their point clearly and succinctly. But for me the most appealing stories were the ones derived from my own favourite social and literary subcultures. Re-workings of fairy tales abound, as in "Ugly Sister" and "Never Give a Sucker". "Waiting for Gandalf" - a long short story set amongst a group of live action role-players who take their hobby just a little too seriously for comfort - is a paticular joy with its nods towards the 20th-century theatre as well as geek subculture. My favourite of the lot, however, was "Gastronomicon", in which the gothic horror universe of H.P. Lovecraft intrudes into the world of suburban dinner parties. It also has one of the best first paragraphs I've ever read.

It's this kind of left-field thinking which make "Jigs and Reels" such a joy to dip into. That, and its wonderful lead characters (of whom the best by far are "Breakfast at Tesco's" delightful Miss Golightly and "Tea with the Birds"'s inscrutable, incomprehensible, but huge-hearted Mr. Tamaoki). There are weaknesses too. Every now and then it does seem that Harris tries too hard to be self-consciously "girly". Her obsession with shoes started to grate after awhile, for me at least (as a male reader with no interest at all in that department!). A few of the stories have the ring of having been done before - but they are always done well.

It's a pity that so few publishers seem willing to let writers produce books of short stories. At their best they are more accessible than novels, less rambling, and brilliant in their clarity. There are several like that in this collection. Even when the stories don't live up to this standard, each story of "Jigs and Reels" contains a little nugget of something precious, and provides an easily digestible, bite-size bit of food for thought. Definitely recommended.

Jigs and Reels (review by Judy) - Rated
I'm a tweelve year old who loves reading and when I read this book it brought another level to it. It's all you want when your reading a book.

The short stories range from romance, friendship, school and many many more every day topics. With a compelling twist at each end what more could you ask for.

Joanne Harris you are officially my fav writter!

Food for Thought - Rated
Joanne Harris has a talent for turning the usual into the unusual as can be seen from this collection of short stories. Harris writes about love, hate, envy, fear, jealousy and other emotions we all feel at some times in our lives in a touching, funny, sad and even sinister way.

Harris is an observer of human beings and touchingly translates this into her writing. 'Breakfast at Tesco's' and 'Al and Christine's world of Leather' are an example of Harris' understanding of the way people behave towards one another.

Be prepared though, Harris can lure the reader into a story of everyday events, twist it ever so slightly and leave you feelingly shocked and even disturbed as in 'Waiting for Gandalf'.

I throughly enjoyed these short stories and would recommend them to fans of Joannes Harris and to those first coming to her writing. As with her other books, these stories leave one with a feeling of having read something lyrical, poetical and meaningful while having been entertained.

short on interest - Rated
JH should stick with the Chocolat format... I lost interest after the rather superb five quarters - Coastliners made me yawn and I couldn't get past chapter 4 - rare indeed for me. The short stories feel like a cash in - there is no warmth, no interest in the characters, in fact no viable plot in most of them. Get back to what you're good at JH.... short stories really aren't your forte!