These short stories feel very much of the moment. Moving from everyday realism to speculative science fiction, the impact of austerity is a unifying theme, as we follow a range of characters in often frontline roles - social workers with impossible workloads, an underfunded music service on the brink of closure. While this may sound bleak, you'll find tangible hope here in the lived-out acts of everyday heroism and survival. A gritty tonic.
All this had happened two to three weeks ago, the amount of time it had taken for the referral to get to me. I would have liked to have seen it sooner. But I was drowning, drowning, drowning, like we all were, under the weight of files, with the weight of need in the city, waking up in the night with the feeling of being crushed in a vice, sharp in the knowledge that I had missed something, that it was only a matter of time before something terrible happened.
