A Snow Garden and Other Stories

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Joyce chooses to write about ordinary and forgotten people, but sometimes her vision of chavvy types doesn’t quite ring true, and when she isn’t being melancholy she’s twee. “Christmas Day at the Airport” was so contrived it made me groan. While I don’t think any of her books are truly great, they’re pleasant, relatable and easy to read. In I’ll Be Home For Christmas: when busy, much-in-demand pop star X (formerly Tim) tells his mum he’ll be home for Christmas, he asks her not to make a fuss. But Sylvia is so looking forward to seeing him again, her teenaged son made good, the one thing that proves she’s the equal of her fancy sisters, that she goes a little overboard, and forgets (sort of) that she also has a daughter.

One of the first flowers to bloom each year is snowdrops. Snowdrops are a delight in the late winter when planted in naturalistic drifts below trees at their best. Plant the bulbs in the places where they fall to create a display that looks more natural.

Located at Homegrown Garden Centre on Lochend Road in Gartcosh, the centre is making their first Christmas in the area memorable. These shrubs add a fiery display of orange, red, or yellow stems to the garden in the winter. On them, early flowering bulbs look fantastic underplanted. For the most vibrant stem colour, plant in full sun, prune annually in spring and ensure the soil does not dry out. Dogwood (Cornus) care guide. On a recent evening at Snow Garden, a new restaurant nestled inside off-campus student accommodation in the bustling neighbourhood of Hung Hom, I was treated to a wide array of gastronomical, time-honoured Huaiyang delicacies. As read on Radio 4, seven linked stories set in the Christmas holidays - all as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be:

Description: Rachel Joyce's new collection "A Snow Garden and Other Stories" glides through the festive season with interlinked stories which delight and surprise. From an unexpected birth at an airport full of stranded travellers, a famous son wanting to escape the madness for a normal family dinner, to a divorced father's wish to give his two little boys the one thing they really want, a white Christmas. Five stories as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be.

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I have to start this review with a humiliating admission - I have not read any of Rachel Joyce's other work. I know this is awful. I have a copy of The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry sat in my TBR pile and for some reason I just have not got round to reading it yet. I intend to rectify this very soon, having read A Snow Garden & Other Stories. A quote from the forward: “We are at the centre of our own stories. And sometimes it is hard to believe that we are not at the centre of other people’s. But I love the fact that you can brush past a person with your own story so big in your mind and at the same time be a simple passer-by in someone else’s. A walk-on part.”

Maybe Joyce's forte does not lie in writing short stories, because a lot of them felt contrived, unrealistic, and abrupt. There were no explanation to fantastical things, there was no depth to the characters, and we didn't have enough time to become invested in any of the stories. Standing, laughing at the dogs bounding through the snow. They try to leap higher than snow drifts and get drenched with the snow falling from the branches as they cavort through snow laden shrubs.

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In Christmas Day at the Airport: the reader gets all the elements of a nativity scene, but not in the conventional sense. There is indeed a very pregnant young woman (Magda) and her partner, Jo(hanna), three kings (Mrs King and her two daughters), a donkey (among other animals), (shop assistants dressed as) angels, and lambs (fluffy-toy-type). Also six Santas and a choir. Probably not a messiah, though… In A Snow Garden: Henry, divorced, disconnected from his sons, has the boys for six days over Christmas while Debbie goes on vacation. He has promised Owen, a sweet, innocent ten, and Conor, a sometimes snarky fifteen, snow; he has even, to the amusement of his sister, bought them sleds, at a marked-down price (the weather is balmy, snow is definitely not predicted). Henry is at the point of despair when he sees a snow garden, and then is once again concerned for his sanity. Of course, I shouldn’t let them play on a snow covered lawn, any more than they should be allowed on a frosty lawn, as the grass can be damaged and there will be bare patches in the green sward come the summer. But I do let the dogs play, and will have to sow with grass seed in April; not all garden designers have perfect gardens. Here are stories of love, marriage, parenthood, loneliness, despair, angst, and compassion. The characters depicted are so vividly described that you feel you have known them for a long time.