I have thoroughly enjoyed this collection of short stories for December by Ian Sansom. My intention was to read just one story a day for the month; to get me in the mood for Christmas. The stories however are so captivating that I found myself reading on and so finished them after about a week. They instil a mix of emotions: sympathy, humour, sadness and vulnerability. Despite the quick read some of these vignettes have found their sticking place and the simple everyday situations he writes about resonate with personal memories of feelings, thoughts and actions. So although ostensibly these accounts relate to the end of year festive season they also speak to the human situation and the business of getting on with life. They therefore would be immensely readable in other months of the year. I have to mention one story in particular, Down By The River for 23 December. It's one of the longer pieces in the volume and oddly when I started reading it I had recently just watched two fil...
