Healer: Selected Stories

This dazzling and witty collection of flash fictions and short stories by Susan Carey will take you through the gamut of human emotions. Some are funny, some poignant, some haunting, some downright weird. How characters struggle to cope with profound change is a common thread throughout.The eponymous story of this collection, ‘Healer,’ is based on a real experience. In the 1970s, Susan Carey and her mother went up into the Welsh Mountains to visit Ma Davis; a legendary healer. Like a mountain ascetic Ma Davis lived remote from any modernity. Even now in our contemporary world where we have powerful drugs to treat almost every ailment, don’t we all sometimes long for belief in a power beyond the world of science? Did Ma Davis truly have the ability to heal or not? The story reveals the answer.Other tales include: a story about a barren wife who has an erotic encounter with a ghost, a mischievous android who goes AWOL, a Dachshund who has had enough of being an Instagram sensation, an elderly widow who sends cold callers running off in terror, and a woman who cleans hotel rooms for a living but dreams of an unobtainable world of luxury. Susan Carey’s stories will delight and surprise you, exploring the themes of loss and re-birth when life throws a curve ball or two.Deft scene-setting and pacy plots kept me glued to this book brimming with sensuality. From mundane plughole picking to fantastical potions, from countryside UK to India, Susan Carey’s collection, ‘Healer,’ carried me through myriad worlds.Sophie van Llewyn, author of, ‘Bottled Goods,’ longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.Author's net proceeds in aid of, 'Target Ovarian Cancer.'