Dot Dash
Dot Dash is a collection of short stories by Jonathan Pinnock. It is his first collection and was published by Salt Publishing in November 2012.
Blurb
Prepare to enter a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where elephants squat in living rooms, plastic ducks fall from the skies and even the rabbits can’t be trusted. The fifty-eight stories in Jonathan Pinnock’s Scott Prize-winning collection Dot Dash show a vivid yet disciplined imagination at work.
These stories, many of which have individually won prizes, are populated by a rich variety of characters, including a tightrope-walking couple with marital issues, a graffiti artist with an agenda and an interviewee who’s about to find out some awkward truths about himself. Very few of them turn out to be completely innocent, and none of them remains unaffected by the experience.
Jonathan Pinnock’s unashamedly entertaining fictions explore what happens when the macabre and the absurd crash headlong into everyday life. As writer Tania Hershman says, he ‘isn’t content to just pull back the curtain, but sets fire to it and chuckles as it blazes’. With this incendiary first collection, he invites readers to pull up a chair and watch the flames rise.
Critical Reception
Dot Dash was released to a tsunami of indifference from the world of criticism. However, eventually the late-lamented Independent on Sunday came up with a four-star review describing the book as
an entertaining collection of grotesque, fantastic, pungent little tales
which I guess will do.
Relevance to the Mathematical Mysteries
Dot Dash contains the story Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions, in which Archie and Pye make their first appearance, along with µ and Mrs Standage, although the latter's story arc is somewhat different from the one in The Truth About Archie and Pye. There's more about this story in the Dashipedia.
Trivia
When it was originally submitted to Salt's Scott Prize competition, Dot Dash was entitled dot(.) dash(-). Fortunately, this was changed prior to publication.
