"the Coming Day and Other Stories (Paperback)

These new stories -- one novella-length, six shorter -- testify to Edward Upward's continuing creativity into his mid-nineties. They interweave elements from every period of his work: railway accidents and Kafkaesque dreams recall his earliest; concern for the survival of humanity maintains the left-wing commitment of his middle years; and the more contemplative note of his later writings now deepens with the themes of aging, bereavement, and death. The protagonists are threatened by a malevolent state and socio-political violence but are sustained by visions of a better future and the restorative of sexual love. The precise observation and lucid dialogue which always marked Upward's fiction, still makes a powerful impression. The title story is about Cedric, who absconds from a residential home and crosses the divide from reality to fantasy. His picaresque journey takes him to such places as an abattoir hung with human corpses; a football riot; and a private school run by a pedophile.