Open Up

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Brilliant, funny, unsettling. . . Thomas Morris is a master of the contemporary short story' SALLY ROONEY The ironically named Big Mike in ‘Little Wizard’ has been consistently overlooked, due to his short height, his whole life – by his boss, football scouts, and potential romantic partners. His lifelong best friend, Rhian, knows all his secrets and desires except one – he loves her. In a heartachingly honest portrait of one lonely man’s evening, Morris leaves the story with Big Mike finally finding courage, finally taking a risk.

Associate publisher Louisa Joyner acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency. "Philosophically acute and strikingly original," the publisher said of the collection: "Thomas Morris powerfully interrogates themes of connection and (dis)connection as he seeks to find grace, hope and benevolence in the churning tumult of self-discovery."That tonic gift, the sense of truth – the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own. The tonic comes in large doses in Thomas Morris’s debut short-story collection.’ Irish Times a b c d "UCC writer-in-residence Thomas Morris came in search of an Irish wife". Irish Examiner. 2017-10-09 . Retrieved 2023-07-25.

Morris had been faithfully trying to create a novel, wedded to a process that was “very literary and painful”, when he started to cheat on it, fooling around with some seahorses. This writing project was just a bit of fun, without the weight of knowing what it was about, but suddenly there was life to it; he had characters talking to each other. “It’s the same lesson I keep learning,” he says. “If I decide ahead of time what I’m going to do, it dies. The writing has to catch me off guard. Had I known I was going to spend two years writing a 15,000-word novella about seahorses, I might not have written it,” he says, laughing. Open Up is a suite of stories, although Morris thinks of them more as little worlds he has created. Wales is a prelude that introduces themes that recur and morph as the book progresses. Little Wizard’s protagonist Big Mike is a small man whose promising soccer career was stunted by his failure to grow, which threatens to be the story of his life unless he takes a risk.

Advance Praise

An editor at Ireland’s premier literary journal The Stinging Fly , Morris has been an IYKYK figure in the British and Irish literary scene for over a decade. While the magazine has been the sandbox that has nurtured practically all of the nation’s biggest literary names, from Sally Rooney to Nicole Flattery and Colin Barrett, Morris has stayed relatively behind the scenes and the journal’s constant editor.

Morris’s instincts as a writer are on show again here: the impact of this deceptively whimsical story creeps up on the reader and ends up being effective not in spite of but rather because of the fact it’s about a seahorse, whose hopes and fears are both of our world and estranged from it. Similarly, the final story, Closing Teeth, mixes fantasy and reality, featuring a young vampiric man thirsting for escape from his life trapped at home in Caerphilly caring for “Mother”. All Glyn wants is a dentist to give him fangs – a fantastical, funny set-up with the serious undertones of a person desperately seeking surgery in the hope of a clearer sense of identity and belonging. If there is a weakness in the collection it may lie in the seahorse story, Aberkariad, which seems slighter, and perhaps overextends its joke, while the other four pieces explore complex, nuanced moments with greater concentration. It’s also possible to quibble with Morris’s reading of our essential aloneness in the world as something to be sad about. Aloneness can also be freedom, and while his thesis – that connection with others is where we find meaning in life – is easy to get behind, there are many people who don’t find solitude as hollow as it seems in Morris’s stories. But then again, this isn’t a collection about all people. It’s a fine study of young men not quite living their lives. Living in Ireland also reinforced Morris’s conviction that independence from England is in Wales’ best interest.

When Church runs up and whips the ball into the net, the stadium erupts and Gareth roars YES, and his father hugs him tight, his stubble bristling Gareth’s cheek. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? That tonic gift, the sense of truth – the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own’. T he tonic comes in large doses in Thomas Morris’s debut short-story collection.’ Irish Times Well, have a good time, she says. And make sure you get something to eat. I’ve told your father, but you know what he’s like. But, for me, the two standout stories in this collection are ‘Little Wizard’ and ‘Passenger’. They both follow young men who are struggling to cope with their place in the world, their relationships with women and what it means to be a man.

When I’m writing, I default to a kind of earnest realist first person that tries hard to be literary. At some point I get bored and start joking to myself: “Why not write about seahorses for a bit of relief from the Very Important Work over there?” And then the story on the left is the one that starts coming together – being caught by surprise seems to be the way for me to write. I’ve just done a story for radio from the point of view of a seagull, and one of the things I enjoy about that mode is that I can’t use my go-to small details like having someone scratch their chin or sigh during a conversation; I actually have to think, well, how does a seahorse hold its head? Cummins, Anthony (2023-08-05). "Thomas Morris: 'A lot of people in my life seem anxious and confused. I was writing for them as much as me' ". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-08-13. BP: So when you’re writing, are you drafting and redrafting or are you slowly piecing it all together?BP: And they fit into this current fashion for stories of masculinity now , which are often about men having feelings, and the stories often precariously recycle the language of therapy. You steer clear of all that, however. He had the thought of digging up a fresh grave, drinking a bottle of drain cleaner, and just rolling himself in. He wouldn't be no harm to anyone then, and no one would have to deal with his body." Thomas Morris follows up his well-received first short story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing – which won the Wales Book of the Year award in 2016 – with five stories that explore longing, dissociation and the inability to Open Up.