Author: Matthew J. Richardson

Words in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Fiction Junkies, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, CafeLit, Best Microfiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, and Shooter.

The Woman in White | Book Review

Penguin Classics version of The Woman in White

The Woman in White

Wilkie Collins

569 pages

Paperback

Penguin Books

1868

ISBN: 9780140420245

Review

‘There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road – there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven – stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments…’

Walter Hartright, walk along a lonely, moonlit road are disrupted by his meeting a distressed figure, clad entirely in white. What seems at first to be a coincidental encounter is placed into uneasy context when Hartright takes up his duties at drawing master to half-sisters Marian Halcombe and the beautiful heiress Laura Fairlie. The thin, worried woman in white will prove to be the link between Laura and those determined to wrest her fortune from her.

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The Worst Part | Short Story

In the beginning I dropped messages onto the street.

I tipped anything I could find out of the hopper window – bottle caps with biro skating across the shiny plastic, bank statement envelopes upon which my writing was cramped around the cellophane window, used paper napkins flapping drunkenly through the cold air. My messages skittered, swooped, fluttered down onto the slush-banked pavements where they lay amongst the other festive detritus.

I could only open the window briefly – he wakes if there is a chill in the air. The danger of the illicit window isn’t the worst part though. The worst part is quietly pulling the window handle up and feeling it click. The worst part is knowing that the Christmas lights playing against the glass are all the pedestrians down below can see. The worst part is looking at them all, scarves at their mouths and collars pulled high around their ears, looking down not at my paltry epistolary offerings, but at the phones, urgent and needy.

Thanks for reading, folks. Recent short stories include ‘Drip, Drip, Drip‘ and ‘Listen‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

Mantel Pieces | Book Review

Mantel Pieces

Hilary Mantel

335 pages

Paperback

4th Estate

2021

£9.99

ISBN: 9780008430009

Review

Hilary Mantel is known to many for her peerless ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy, the last book of which I reviewed here. She was a true national treasure in an era when such terms are used cheaply. Her short stories, some of which are found in ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’, are also lean and gripping. Although I have listened to her lecture on YouTube many times, I had not read much of her non-fiction.

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Drip, Drip, Drip | Short Story

Rusted water tower against a desert background

The water tower looms, as all water towers do. It does all of the things that water towers are supposed to do; it winks in the setting sun, it slowly rusts. It groans in ponderous, metallic agony.

You like that? Made that up myself, so I did.

Buy some of the more suggestable townsfolk a beer and they will tell you all sorts of things about the tower. They’ll wax about how the creatures first crawled into the shadowy cylinder on a dry, moonless, desert night back in the sixties. They’ll talk, if you let them, about an unsatiable appetite for moisture, for dankness in the arid northern winds, of an incomprehensible idyll of beaded moisture on oxidising iron. You’ll see, if you’ve time enough in the bar, the locals side-eyeing you, even more than might be expected for an out-of-town businessman. You’ll notice lips twitching and elbows dug into friends’ sides.

An outsider would notice these things, an imbecile even. I think you’re more than that, friend.

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Place, Parallax, and a Sense of Community | Article

The liver birds, Liverpool

In June 2022 the fountains in Nottingham’s Old Market Square were turned off after water was discovered leaking into an electrical control area below the mechanism. The water features were a draw for children and their families during hot weather, with youngsters playing in the pools and beneath the jets as shoppers trundled past. In December 2023, and with Nottingham City Council having effectively declared bankruptcy, the local authority confirmed that the features would be switched off permanently in an effort to save £30,000 per year. When I went to the city last year this was indeed the case; Nottingham Council House looked on sternly as the attractive stonework stayed bone-dry. The early morning square was desolate save for pigeons and shop workers walking to their places of employment.

Financial issues affecting town and city centre aesthetics is not unique to Nottingham. In July 2024 the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce said that the city centre was in need of ‘fresh life’, whilst Birmingham City Council’s bankruptcy has resulted in dirtier streets and threats to cultural heritage in England’s second city. In straightened financial times it is easy to understand why local authorities choose to cut seemingly frivolous spending first; after all, shouldn’t we prioritise services like social care and education over the maintenance of water features or ensuring that the facades of historic buildings are scrubbed clean?

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