For His Warriors: Thirty Stories is the second of a series of three collections by Rob Mimpriss. It was preceded by Reasoning and be followed by Prayer at the End.
A Welsh farmer’s wife during the Second World War kills the land-girl her husband has taken as his lover. A leader of the Cornish-language revival commits her last act of protest the day Russian troops march into Berlin. A lonely man on the waterfront at Llandudno wonders whether he or his girlfriend will be first to die of Aids, and a bored man in a restaurant in Cardiff Bay invents a story of arrest and torture in Czechoslovakia to amuse his petulant lover.
‘These stories are a rare kind of joy. Even when they approach moments of discontent and danger they bring to the reader an optimism founded in human relationships. This is a wonderful collection.’
Prof Graëme Harper, Editor, New Writing
‘Both humour and pity often arise from the characters’ inability to understand themselves and those close to them. In suggesting both the truth and the self-deception Mimpriss not only engages our sympathy but makes us question our assumptions about ourselves.’
Caroline Clark, gwales.com
‘There is nothing ostentatious about his writing: most of his characters lead unremarkable, even humdrum, lives; there are few dramatic plot developments; the writing does not draw attention to itself. And yet the best of these pieces express something important about psychology and human relationships, and the sparseness of the writing is capable of considerable power.’
Brian George, The Short Review
‘In Llandudno today... a woman crossed the road as we passed in the car and this action triggered in me the memory of a moment in a story by Rob Mimpriss when a character crosses the road in Llandudno. This means the story has properly gone to where all good stories need to go in readers - deep into the imagination, to live there. The story is called “Valiant” in the collection For His Warriors. I recommend it. Highly. It feels to me already a classic.’
Fiona Owen, author, Going Gentle and editor, Scintilla
Reasoning: Twenty Stories is the first of a series of three collections by Rob Mimpriss. It will be followed by For His Warriors and Prayer at the End.
An old man tries to assess his own guilt in the marriage his teenage daughter has destroyed. A young man tries to understand why, in the same family, he should be both hated and loved. A seventeenth-century Puritan preacher and a Cardiff woman facing divorce unite in their call to ‘know your innermost heart,’ while a Romanian dissident under Ceauşescu and a Welsh-language activist find themselves outwardly liberated but inwardly still in chains.
‘Through the stealthy movements of his prose, Rob Mimpriss enacts the quiet enigma of people’s lives and relationships. The result is an understated fiction of compelling intensity.’
Prof. M Wynn Thomas
‘A quiet writer with a loud voice... I'll be listening for more.’
Michael Nobbs, gwales.com
‘if readers want stories that will provoke a great deal of musing on family dynamics, Mimpriss’ collections can be counted upon. The writer tugs at run-of-the-mill scenes and gleans details that morph from ordinary to expressive before the readers’ eyes. Bleak as they may be, these are honest fragments of the human condition and Mimpriss’ pensive eloquence is to be credited.’
Sophie Baggott, New Welsh Review
