Uncommon Type (2017) is a series of 17 short stories, all set in America. The story, Three Exhausting Weeks – is fantastic, and the best in the collection. A frenetic A-type girl dates a lazy guy and virtually maps out his schedule of activities for the whole dating period. Written from the boy’s perspective, it’s a witty and comical, and in the end, I just had to love Anna. Atta girl! I also liked A Special Weekend about 10-year-old Kenny Stahl in the spring of 1970. His father was head cook at the Blue Gum Restaurant until he finds a new job, a new home, and, ‘it turned out, a new family.’ His mother comes to visit, to take Kenny on a special weekend. But, from that grand opening, the rest of the stories pale into the background. This is the actor’s first book and feels a bit like the early J.D. Salinger experimenting with his collection of short stories (like ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ and ‘Nine Stories’) before he writes Catcher in the Rye (1951). The sto
REJECT GREED; TREAD LIGHTLY; CARE LOCALLY; RESPECT DIVERSITY ... by Martina Nicolls