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Vibrant short stories have always been an integral part of Rosalind Brackenbury's output. In 1975, with three astonishing novels behind her, she collected together 14 of the best to date. No Such Thing as a Free Lunch was published as a thick, stapled booklet by a tiny press in Leicester, with illustrations by her then husband. It has since become the most elusive of all her catalogue, an absolute rarity.
These stories showcase Brackenbury's intense, visual and sensual style applied to would-be familiar moments: in The Visitor, a wandering friend suddenly reappearing in the life of a pregnant young couple in their first staleness causes a new vitalisation; in A Bird Flew In a young girl undergoes a crucial day of her childhood with a wilder friend; in One in a Thousand the struggling, socially-outcast mother of a 'difficult' boy finds a sympathetic listener in a fellow theatregoer, and reveals what she sees as her great sacrifice.
The volume also includes two groups of pieces: Lemmings, Revolution and The World's End posit the strange meeting between ordinary domestic life and chilling scenarios where the usual certainties of life seem to be failing; the title story, as well as En vacances, En voyage, A la montagne and Dans le train vividly symbolise the enlivening and catalysing quality of travel in France, where relationships are propelled into new clarity by new surroundings.
The renowned writer A. L. Kennedy looks back at this extraordinarily bold and tactile collection in an introduction written specially for this new edition.