People Always Surprise You: Intriguing Tales of Fact & Fiction
by Victor S. Jones
Vanguard Press [80pp, softback, illustrated, ISBN 978-1-83671-183-4, £6.99]

by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Victor Jones here publishes his first book, a collection of short stories whose compactness belie the depth of their observations on and insights into what might reasonably be termed the ‘human condition’, informed by an outlook such as never becomes cynical or negatory.

What are the stories like?

Having worked as advertising copywriter then manager of his own business, Jones is well placed to explore the myriad nooks and crannies of everyday existence that, in reality, are anything but normal – a loaded adjective if ever there was one. The eight stories contained herein underline this tenet to varying degrees, with a common factor being that moment of epiphany which comes about through even the most mundane of circumstances. Several of these stories might well be considered as moralities for what is a decidedly post-moral era.

The shortest if certainly not the lightest of these stories, All that glitters… is an instance of flash fiction at its acutest in that revelation such as emanates from above rather than below. With its scenario of spiritual riches being played off – knowingly – against financial wealth, The Violin equates most directly to those Tales of the Unexpected with which Roald Dahl entertained and provoked earlier generations, notwithstanding the appreciable difference in Jones’s literary manner. Outwardly the most realistic story, A Night at the Opera relates an occasion that almost everyone finds themself in sooner or later. Its snatching hilarity out of the jaws of embarrassment is in pointed contrast with V1 & V2 Nazi Rockets, when Hitler’s weapons of mass destruction facilitated an existential circumstance pertinent to this author.

The longest and most descriptive among these stories, Back From the Dead centres on two children in the ‘Baltic Alps’ whose actions during one severe winter enshrine that fusion of innocence with experience so often envisaged but so rarely encountered. Something rather more humorous is conveyed by Chinese Meals, a situation-comedy where customs culinary and interpersonal are related with tangible authenticity. If hardly the deepest story, Concord is arguably the most subtly realized given its conflating historical overview with that ‘lived through’ immediacy as galvanizes a cautionary tale of technical triumph and human failure. Missing Peaks affords a more ironic perspective, its ‘get rich quick’ message now seeming   as typical of its time as almost any other and hence an ideal way to round off this collection.

Does it all work?

It does, not least for that skill and evident enjoyment with which Jones elides between fact and fiction across the course of what is an expertly crafted while always arresting sequence. Throughout, he evinces an eye for detail and an ear for nuance which are hallmarks of any worthwhile short stories, so making them seem anything but literary exercises. More than that, however, these stories merge into a cohesive and enlightening composite – but whether of the author himself or of an imagined ‘everyman’ needs be left for each reader to decide.

Is it recommended?

It is. Stylishly presented with its scene-setting sketches (by the author?) as frontispiece to each story, this collection is short enough to be read at a single sitting if substantial enough for repeated readings. The follow-up volume is planned and should be worth waiting for.

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Published post no.2,790 – Friday 6 February 2026