My enormous thanks to Alice Fowler for arranging to have her short story collection, The Truth Has Arms And Legs sent to me, and to Isabelle at Fly on the Wall for making sure it arrived. It’s my absolute pleasure to share my review today.

Published by Fly on the Wall Press on July 14th, The Truth Has Arms and Legs is available for pr-order here.

The Truth Has Arms And Legs

Delve into a world of change and reinvention.

Where relationships are as delicate as turtle eggs, and just as easily smashed.

This poignant short story collection explores the pivotal moments that transform our lives. Jenny, whose life is defined by small disasters, discovers a bigger, more generous version of herself. A traveller girl might just win her race and alter her life’s course. A widow, cut off in a riverside backwater, opens her heart to a stranger.

In this captivating collection by award-winning writer, Alice Fowler, readers will be moved by the raw vulnerability of human connection, and the resilience that allows us to grow and thrive in the face of hardship. In change, Fowler’s characters find the ability to be truly free.

My Review of The Truth Has Arms And Legs

Fourteen short stories.

Oh. The Truth Has Arms And Legs is glorious. These stories are steeped in emotion and so beautifully written that they pulsate from the page with vivid attraction. I loved each and every one of them.  

I confess that, as this is a slim volume, I thought I’d slip in reading the collection in between other books as a quick read. A light weight palette cleanser if you will. What an error of judgement. The Truth Has Arms And Legs deserves every moment spent reading it, savouring the incredibly humanity Alice Fowler displays in her writing, her complete understanding of the human condition and her luminous brilliance in writing. There’s not an extraneous syllable or a word out of place here. The Truth Had Arms And Legs is an absolute masterclass of perfection.

Themes are wide ranging and impactful, from racism to infertility, marital control to war and dementia, illegitimacy to belonging, so that the stories eddy with meaning and relatability. There truly is something here for any and every reader. And the manner of writing by Alice Fowler creates an emotional connection in the reader that is irresistible. To remain unaffected by this writing would be to have no humanity, no soul. Descriptions are vivid and affecting, direct speech is natural and convincing, characters leap from the page as real people and each story is a sparkling jewel of literary brilliance with surprising depth to plot even when the stories are, like Jack’s Hedge, only a couple of pages long.

The Truth Has Arms And Legs is a wonderful, flawless and fantastic collection. I’m not sure defining the collection as short stories is fair, but it’s certainly snappier than ‘short pieces of writing looking into the very heart and soul of humanity and the one book you MUST buy this year if you want to read a masterclass of affecting writing’. The Truth Has Arms And Legs is, quite simply, exquisite and my life has been enhanced by the opportunity to read these stories. This collection by Alice Fowler has gone straight onto my list of favourite reads this year and I pity anyone who doesn’t get the chance to read it.

About Alice Fowler

Alice Fowler is an award-winning writer of short stories and longer fiction. She writes about love, loss, reinvention, motherhood and the complex relations between parents and their children. Her collection explores resilience, and our ability as humans to grow and change.

Alice won the Historical Writers’ Association short story competition in 2020 and the Wells Festival of Literature short story competition in 2021. Other stories have been short- and long-listed in prizes and printed in anthologies. Her historical novel was long-listed for the 2021 Stylist Feminist Fiction Prize.

Alice has a degree in Human Sciences from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and worked as a print journalist until 2006.

She lives in Surrey, England, with her husband and teenage sons, and love theatre, tennis, books and walking in the Surrey Hills.

For more information, visit Alice’s website, follow her on Twitter @AliceFwrites, or find Alice on Instagram.