Set in the strange ‘neither here nor there’ borderland of Flintshire between England and Wales, the stories of Blood Etc examine human relationships, love, lies, regret and hope.

Gee Williams paints rich images of the landscape and lives that her characters inhabit. In Morfa she describes the weather as a living thing that “squatted, huge and immovable, on the too-close horizon.”

Her sentence are often unexpectedly vivid, capturing scenes effortlessly as she describes a character’s eyes “widening in their crepe nests”, while a woman walks inside “off the lawn, the emerald slivers falling from her dagger-heels.”

Then, the moment you relax into a tale, Gee takes your breath away with a simple revelation of human nature, ruthlessly revealing the deep, vast truths the rest of us carry unconsciously within us, never recognising them until she throws them before us, murmuring look at this. Continue reading →