Dust, dancing

In Ian Gouge's eclectic new collection, Dust, dancing, many of the protagonists find themselves thwarted: by ambition, by love, by old age. Interlaced with occasional victories, they experience both avoidable and unavoidable setbacks: the man tattooing his life history on his back; the woman fantasising about a Hollywood star; the man fired from his job; the actress believing she is destined to be 'a Bond Girl'; the policewoman making a gruesome discovery. We share the pleasure and pain associated with their various journeys, the resonance of our own experience often adding a personal veneer to our reading. Gouge's work has been compared to Henry James, Sally Rooney, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. Dust, dancing is his fourth collection of short stories.