You Have 24 Hours to Love Us

Identity, in Guy Ware's confident debut short story collection, is a mercurial thing. Arriving at a nondescript suburban house, a middle-aged man is met by a new wife, a new past, and a memory he cannot surrender. A chance liaison outside Covent Garden tube station leads to a cruel game of make-believe. A chicken farmer on a remote mountainside is alarmed to learn the president of a faraway superpower needs his approval. Lawyers paint conflicting pictures of an alleged terrorist; a city trader decides, without warning, to walk out of her life; flirting lovers take role-play to a new, existential, level. Whether living under a totalitarian regime or simply getting through the day in a grindingly predictable metropolis, Ware's characters struggle with the urge to redefine themselves, to start again, to reboot. Knowing that the course of an entire life can hinge on the smallest decision--turning left or right--they ultimately remind us of the courage, as well as the coping mechanisms, of facing up to responsibilities and simply staying put.