The Sugar Mile

A topical and accessible collection, The Sugar Mile takes its readers on a journey from wartime London to modern-day America. In a series of monologues, each beautifully drawn and intimate, Glyn Maxwell details the effects and experiences of conflict: the sense of community bounded by a distrust of strangers and foreigners; whole streets razed to the ground; homes lost, possessions misplaced and characters displaced; fears for loved-ones offset by tentative bargains with god; casual encounters given an intense, unreal edge by the context in which they occur; the routine drama and unfamiliar `everydayness' of bombs, blackouts, shelters, temporary accommodation and evacuation . . . With painstaking clarity and honesty, Maxwell has captured the surrealism of a world under siege -- whether WWII or the war on terror declared post 9/11.