Open Up

Five stories examine how people reach for one another, and how often they miss. A young boy goes to his first football match and finds that a private kind of magic is working on him. Elsewhere, Morris offers a sympathetic view of adolescence, with its confusions and sudden certainties. In another story, a seahorse observes grief and loss, which gives the collection an unexpected point of view on sorrow. Across the book, Morris looks for kindness, hope and generosity within the upheaval of working out who you are. The stories are philosophically sharp and formally inventive, and they carry real emotional weight while stretching what a short story can do. This is the author's second collection. His debut short story collection, We Don't Know What We're Doing, came before it.