Small holes in the silence : short stories / by Patricia Grace.

Busy lines -- Side street -- Stepping out -- Doll woman -- Toasted sandwich -- Eben -- Until we meet again -- Love story -- Stranger danger -- The kiss -- Curlytop and ponytail -- Moon story -- Headlights -- To Russia with love -- Four corners -- Wendel -- Stealing Mark -- Tommy -- Manners Street blues -- Flash story -- Pa wars.

The feast of stories is varied: urban, rural, New Zealand, overseas, tribal, contemporary. An elderly woman, whose husband has died, gathers firewood on the beach while the appliances in her house fall to bits one by one. Willie falls in love with a statue. Great-grandmother reveals how she chose her husband-to-be - both of them. Rona curses the Moon. Petina tells her old school friend Raycharles that she's looking for a father for her baby. The thread that runs through all the stories, though, is Grace's huge sympathy for the underdog and the perspective of the outsider. The world she depicts is often a stark and unsentimental place, in which people struggle against ageing, rejection, violence and betrayal.