Words are like Birds

'Michael loves the idea that words should mutate and metamorphose into something else. He imagines them emerging like butterflies from a cocoon and flying away from the cage of their previous meaning. Words flying free like birds.'

In this collection of stories, words really are like birds, flitting in and out of peoples' lives. Each story is original and different, but what links them all is change and transformation: characters on the cusp of change, characters facing up to the consequences of change:

• An unwanted visitation from the past,
• A strange plant suddenly appearing in an office,
• An act of conjugal deceit,
• A terror lurking in the valley below.

Whether the subject is puberty or illness or death, or just waking up naked in a lift without knowing how you got there, each story has its own unique charm and the power to carry us away with the words. Words that are like birds.