Thomas Hardy Was an Optimist

A Collection of Short Stories from the Plague Years

By: Circa24

Narrated by: Carrie Gibson

Joe Market makes his living by panhandling cars while he tries to suppress trauma. On her 80th birthday, Alice awaits a visit from her daughter. Karen's mother expects her to give up her life to care for her. As a hospice patient, Jane struggles to leave a legacy. Two women struggle with hearing child abuse in a neighbour's apartment. In each story, the characters grapple with a problem that can haunt them or provide salvation.

©2018 Circa24 (P)2024 Circa24

The book captures the period beautifully!

Thomas Hardy Was an Optimist: A Collection of Short Stories from the Plague Years captures the darker Zeitgeist of the trying decades of the '90s and early '00s. Instead of growing old together, young people were burying their friends as they died from the new pandemic of AIDS that was spreading across the world. The push for LGB rights (as it was known then) was ratcheting up, and all this happened against the mundane background of tribulations of increased underemployment, the continuing, poorly addressed PTSD and support issues of Viet Naam veterans, and the other social ills that never went away.

Although the book has many stories that feature LGBTQ+ protagonists, not everyone fits neatly in a box, and in some stories, such as the lead, Joe Market, the sexual identity of the character is neither addressed nor important. And I appreciated the light-hearted story at the end. It provided a nice uplift.