'I could not put this book down and loved every page.' - Salena Godden
'Humane, funny, surprising, profound.' - Chris Power
'A masterpiece.' - David Keenan
Meet Drew Lord Haig, called upon to sing the obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Or Max, who recalls an eventful journey to a Christian film festival. Meet Mrs Dallesandro, in the tanning salon on her wedding anniversary dreaming of a teenage sexual experience. And Sonya, who scours the streets of Belfast for the missing posters of her dead son.
In Dance Move, the collection of stories from Wendy Erskine, we meet characters who are looking to wrest control of their lives, only to find themselves defined by the moment in their past that marked them.
In these stories – as in real life – the funny, the tender and the devastating go hand in hand. Full of warmth, the familiar and the strange, they are about what it means to live in the world, how far you can end up from where you came from, and what it means to look back.
Shortlisted for the irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year.
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Wendy Erskine lives in Belfast. Her fiction and non-fiction have been published by Repeater, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Faber & Faber, Tangerine Press, No Alibis Press and Rough Trade Books. Sweet Home, her first collection of stories, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. It was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and won the 2020 Butler Literary Award. From critically acclaimed Northern Irish writer Wendy Erskine: a collection of profound and darkly funny stories about people trying to move on with their lives, while bound to the past.
