I am a big fan of the Swann lady, her way of seeing the world always makes me smile and this collection doesn’t disappoint. Swann takes us into multiple futures (a future that seems to be edging closer all the time) full of apocalyptical scenarios that seem plausible when you think about them, covering bizarre situations of living under a glass dome, travelling in a glass hotel and a race to the moon on cheese and ladders.

A lot of the stories here have been featured in a number of publications and a few were taken from Swann’s book Fortune Box, it was nice to revisit those stories, I’d forgotten how fun they were. The stand out stories for me were Trump Moon (absolutely hilarious, had me chuckling into me tea) and Invite Ghosts and Earn Pounds, the idea behind this was genius, I would so be up for this if it was possible.

Worst story in the collection you ask? Why that would be How To: Make your own Live Kitten Necklace, brilliant idea and I want to make one of these…a catalogue is mentioned about things you can buy to help you achieve this but no link is provided, outrageous! I think this story shows what a crazy sense of humour Swann has.

The stories may be heavily of the absurd kind but the more you think about them they become scarily accurate, take Trump Moon for example, somebody is doing something incredible dumb and even though you can see this you still get caught up in the madness and this is just like having a twitter argument with a douche bucket. I also like how Swann messes with your concept of time, the stories are based in the past, present and future but once you get into it you soon forget when you are.

This book was great fun, there are so many layers to these stories that when you re-read it you are definitely going to spot new things you missed the first time around. It is fantastic that all these stories have been gathered together here for you to see just how fashionable Swann is with her live kitten necklace.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/the-sharp-end-of-the-rainbow-by-madeleine-swann/