"Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village"
by Louis de Bernieres
Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Notwithstanding-Stories-English-Louis-Bernieres/dp/0099542021/
Reading history and reviews
Finished on 21st June 2012
Someone at my book group lent this to me after I'd mentioned that I'm not really a huge fan of short story collections. In "Notwithstanding" (set in the eponymous fictional English village) stories about various people are loosely interrelated, and she was right that the connections gave the book as a whole a sense of cohesion that generally I miss in this genre. Aside from this the writing is excellent: de Bernieres has a deceptively light touch and I liked how he treads a fine line between the comical and the profound, with several of the stories (for me "The Girt Pike" in particular) being surprisingly moving.