Stepping Out

Synopsis

These stories observe how people live through moments of realisation; how they negotiate the avenues of loss, with cowardice and courage and a fair amount of bewilderment.

While fishing on a sunny loch, a woman is suddenly convinced and terrified that her lover is about to leave her. Parents in San Francisco learn that their son has been in a car accident, and may be dying. A girl loses her virginity the same day as the funeral of her much despised mother, and later understands which is the greater loss.

Humour threads through these dark moments and days. Even death – especially death – is not exempt. And love is perfectly heaving with embarrassing poignancy. These are warm stories about real people. Loss changes them, but change makes them feel alive.

Praise for this Book

‘Cynthia Rogerson tells a compelling and involving story.’ —Jackie Kay

‘Cynthia Rogerson is a writer of tremendous heart and intellect and manages to combine the two without trace of sentimentality. Like Alice Munro she writes with startling authenticity and is a North American writer with Scottish sensibilities. Her humour is sly, her characterisation superb, she winkles out and makes heroic the average nerd in all of us. She is a courteous rebel and currently one of Scotland’s s best writers.’ —Laura Marney

Reviews of this Book

‘A Dangerous Place is an intensely felt and movingly rendered story. A worthy prize winner.’ —Bernard MacLaverty

‘Her writing has a lovely spirit to it; an appealing mixture of the spiky and the warm.’ —Michel Faber

‘Rogerson has an ability to inhabit all her characters convincingly. She sketches them with just the right amount of detail, chooses just the right aspects to emphasise.’ —Scotland on Sunday

‘Cynthia Rogerson is a new writer of great clarity and humanity – definitely one to watch.’ —AL Kennedy