Matt McAvoy Book Review

I can confidently claim, without any overstatement, that this is probably as good a collection of short stories as I have read yet.  Annika Galloway is a fantastic storyteller, a student of psychology and the human condition, and it shows in these four profound, melancholic tales of a group of people in a psychiatric waiting room of sorts, which you’ll be thinking about long after you finish reading them.  Each of the tales is affecting and utterly engaging, with some very clever craftiness thrown in and a couple of genuinely unexpected story arcs.  I won’t give any of them away but, to summarize, there is the tale of an elderly man and woman falling in love as they wait; a teenage girl with a serious weight issue; a couple struggling to live together with depression; and a man with issues related to childhood abuse.  Annika clearly knows and loves writing about the subject of mental health – and she is very, very good at it; her story-craft and timing are outstanding.  Admittedly, there is copious melodrama, the tales being utterly cerebral, and there is a tendency to sustained-drill home the emotional point being made, but you can see the author’s writing maturing by the last tale, the longest and perhaps the best of the four.

Whether you are looking for a companion book that you can read on your commute, short stories to hide in on a lunch break, or just something to cosy up in bed with, or on a Sunday afternoon, The Waiting Room is very highly recommended.  I would certainly like to read more from this very promising author, and indeed would have liked another story or two in this relatively short volume; I was actually quite disappointed to reach the end, but felt all the better for having read it.  I know personally how very hard Annika has worked to make this book the best it can be, and am quite proud to have had a little input in that respect, for the final product is something quite special.  Really looking forward to her next.