The Pier Falls review – a virtuoso collection by Mark Haddon

Brilliant short stories about the imagination’s darkest ‘what-ifs’

Mark Haddon is never going to be accused of writing the same book twice. For those who admired The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (everyone), there is bound to be, with each new book he writes, the sneaky wish to re-experience the startling enjoyment of that funny, disarming, unrepeatable bestseller. But novels should not have to compete with one another. Since 2003, Haddon has written a couple of involving novels – A Spot of Bother (2006) and The Red House (2012) and now this collection of short stories. His publishers alert us to the likelihood that we will find his imagination “even darker than we had thought”. An understatement – I would not have described Haddon’s imagination as dark at all until now.

The title story is a virtuoso piece of writing – the account of a falling pier. It is minutely described (it reminded me of Stanley Spencer’s crowded Southwold beachscape). A sensational disaster, it is told in an unsensational way. It is not quite a story, more a penetrating snapshot of a calamity in which all the characters are strangers, although some are fleetingly introduced in their last moments. Haddon overturns what Philip Larkin called the “miniature gaiety” of the seaside as tragedy trashes it – his ghost train is newly haunted.

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