Today is PUBLICATION DAY for Re-Connections: Thirty-seven stories of connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting.
Here’s the description:
Why are we attracted to certain individuals and repelled by others? Why do we fall out of contact with former friends, or fall out with them altogether? Why do we crave friendship?
The answers to these questions are many and varied, and some of them reveal themselves in the stories of this collection. Not all these connections desire to lead to friendship; some are business-related. Yet, even those connections work better with friendly comments and gestures. What happens to people who struggle with such social norms? Are they destined to remain friendless?
Without realising it, Miriam Drori has been interested in this topic for many years. That’s evident in the fact that these tales were written throughout her writing career. Some of them are completely or partly autobiographical, while others are purely fictional. Which ones are which is a question she declines to answer.
Below is a repost of today’s Substack post.
To celebrate, here is the beginning of each of the stories I’ve described in previous posts. (The titles link to the posts about the stories.)
Gruesome in Golders Green
Sarah doesn’t look like a heroine. You’d probably think of her as a typical middle-aged woman. Actually, you might not think that in summer, but now it’s January and she walks quickly along Rotherwick Road, Golders Green, her head bent against the biting evening wind. She’s glad to be wearing a thick brown winter coat, a woollen scarf and gloves, and fur-lined boots. Her tights don’t protect her quite so well, but her legs are used to that.
A Sticky Interview
“I can fit you in at ten thirty tomorrow. See you then. Goodbye.”
He has ended the meeting, Zoom tells me. He’s noted the appointment and moved on to other matters. He won’t spare me one more thought before that allotted time. I, on the other hand, am still staring at that damn screen.
How to Talk to a Dog
This is no ordinary stick-in-the-mud stuck-in-a-lift story. Because just before a lift door of my thoroughly modern block imprisons me inside, in ambles a dog. At this stage, a good writer would specify a breed for the creature, but really, dogs and I don’t mix, and anyway, my mind is fully occupied elsewhere.
Train Trouble
It’s hard when you arrive in a foreign country and have to plunge into a language you haven’t spoken, or even heard, for many years. You enter it with a splash and emerge dripping, drained and sagging from the effort. This is what I felt in October 1998 when I landed at Orly Airport, near Paris. In addition to needing to cope with nasal voices and half-remembered words, I had to look after my nine-year-old son, Sammy, who spent every spare moment on his Game Boy during this trip, his first to the French capital.
You can read these and thirty-three other stories in Re-Connections, available in ebook and paperback forms from Amazon and as a paperback from various other online stores.
Miriam Drori, Author 