Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

When I requested Escape Routes from NetGalley, I obviously was not paying enough attention – I must have been distracted by the attractive cover. I am not a fan of short stories in general as I find them unsatisfying; no sooner have you started reading and it’s all over. Unfortunately, this also means I have nothing to compare these stories with.
Having said all that, the writing is very accomplished, but I was just not emotionally engaged. As the title suggests, there is a theme running through the stories in this collection; in the words of Freddie Mercury, they want to break free. The nine very different stories are a mix of style, length and genre. The three stories about the Rat Catcher have a kind of fairytale quality and they gave me the creeps, as they were no doubt meant to.
I look forward to reading Naomi Ishiguro’s next book – hopefully it will be a novel – as this was beautifully written, but just not what I was expecting.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Like many short story collections, this one was a bit of a mixed bag. The writing is great throughout but I was definitely more invested in some stories more than others.

3/5 stars

I have to say: I don’t envy Naomi Ishiguro...
With the legacy of her father proceeding her, she clearly has some large shoes to fill. Although I tried to go into her debut collection with a completely open mind, I’d be lying if I said her last name didn’t play a part in me requesting an ARC of it.

It’s important to me to mention this subconscious bias that many of us may have towards the daughter of a Nobel price winner. Often times, there’s a lot of talk surrounding the rise of a new creater, that happens to be family of. Some people will overestimate them: “as the daughter of, she has to have the same talent”. Others will underestimate will, feeling like they only got they opportunity they did because of their parents fame.
In spite of them writing under the same name, in very similar genres, aswell as being deliberatly marketed as being family, I will try to detangle my feelings about Kazuo’s work, from those about Naomi’s work. Nonetheless I wanted to mention this interesting choice, probably on the part of her agents, as I’m not sure it does Naomi any favours perse.
Judging from this debut collection, Naomi is perfectly capable as an author to stand on her own two feet. She has a destinct voice that I enjoyed reading from, and paints some great mental pictures with her words. She demonstrates that she has many of the skills a author needs: her choice of words is smart and deliberate, and manages to hit the right emotional tone for the context. As a non-native, one of the things I’ve always loved about the English language is discovering the nuances that “synonyms” carry, and how words with the same meaning can convey a different emotional value. It’s something that not all languages have, and something I always enjoy discovering in a new one. Naomi Ishiguro plays with this idea a lot.
This is a major selling point for me, especially in short stories: the fewer words, the more each word counts.
Another skill she demonstrate is the ability to create destinct voices for separate characters, which is where I guess the comparisson to David Mitchells work comes from. That unfortunately brings me to the downside of the collection, as many of the critiques that David Mitchells Cloud Atlas received are in place for Escape Routes even more so.
The reason I love David Mitchells work is that he manages to link his very different stories in a common tread to create a cohesive whole. That common thread, I missed in Escape Routes. All of them share the tone of “weirdness”, yet they overall feel more like an anthology of sorts that a cohesive whole.

Individually, some stories were stronger than others, and because of the lack of connection, the weaker ones weren’t able to be “pulled up” by the stronger ones. This eventually resulted in only a few of the stories being truly memorable to me.
As a whole, this collection was good but not great. It was a mixed bag of stories, written by a very capable and talented young woman, of which some will stick with me, but not all. I will keep an eye on Naomi in the future however, as I think I’d enjoy a full length novel from her hand more than I did her stories.

Many thanks to Tinder Press for providing me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review!

A novel can often be a very interesting way of exploring a theme - such as love, freedom, grief - but the very form of the 'novel' brings with it some restrictions in the amount of different ways you can approach or discuss a subject without sacrificing the overall narrative. Many novelists do this incredibly successfully, but I've always found that short story collections can approach their subjects in a much more unique way, taking a whole range of drastically different characters, settings, plots and intrinsic messages, and uniting them with a common theme.

Nowhere is this benefit of short stories more evident than in Naomi Ishiguro's debut collection. Escape Routes sees Ishiguro find inventive and unexpected new ways to explore her themes of freedom, flight and individuality, weaving through settings as diverse as the bedroom of a newly wed couple who purchase a giant stuffed bear, a fantasy kingdom plagued by rats, a rooftop where a woman comes to terms with her grief and a closet where a space-obsessed child manages to conjure a universe. It's a hugely varied collection and without the skill of Ishiguro could have ended up as a very disconnected set of tales, but the subtle thematic links are fantastically construed and as a result this is one of the most coherent sets of short stories I've read.

There are a couple of less memorable stories, but in general each of them stands very successfully as a single entity, with several of them conjuring incredibly powerful images that linger long after reading. Particularly memorable to me are the story about a space-obsessed child who comes into contact with an aerospace engineer and is challenged to draw some rather existential concepts, creating something wondrous as a result, as well as a short story focused around a man who becomes increasingly obsessed with coffee and the fast-forwarding effect it seems to have on his life.

The latter of these two, in particular, is my highlight of the collection. Ishiguro not only juxtaposes two very different types of people - those who live in the moment and have little regard for what has passed or what is yet to come, and those who are constantly trying to plan ahead and cram as much as possible into their life, to the detriment of the experiences themselves - but also very clearly plays with the form of the story to illustrate this point. As the protagonist drinks more and more coffee to facilitate his ever-increasing psychological demands of himself, he remarks that he now finds the idea of prose far too slow and laborious, at which point the story migrates to the format of a play and back, as the caffeine wears off, before then losing all structure and descending into a stream of consciousness when the protagonist hits his worst. This type of ploy can often come across as gimmicky and unearned in writing, but here, Ishiguro handles it masterfully and it's a fantastic use of the medium.

I was surprised to see some of the stories were highly interconnected, with three actually forming something of a trilogy. I liked the setting and concept of the story arc across the three tales, but it did, by the end, start to feel more like a conventional multi-perspective novel, which felt like a slight let down after the clever use of the short story form throughout the rest of the collection, though this is a minor gripe at best.

Another theme that Ishiguro explores to a significant extent is the idea of busy urban life and the homogeneity of big cities, whether specifically named as London or kept purposefully unclear. Many of the points made - about the speed that people walk, the way that rush hour affects the whole dynamic of the city and its inhabitants, the pressures this can put on one psychologically - are all things that I've been aware of in my own experience but haven't ever seen portrayed in fiction quite so effectively.

Overall, I thought this was a very impressive collection of short stories from an incredibly promising young writer. Ishiguro has a vivid imagination and the literary powers to effectively form this into a series of highly effective stories and considerations, and I very much look forward to seeing what she turns her hand to next.

I received an electronic review copy through Netgalley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Many thanks to Headline for approving my request.

I am not a big fan of short stories although I have really enjoyed a couple of collections by authors that I already read but I also like to push my boundaries and embrace the new every so often. Something in the blurb for this book drew me in so I took a punt and, having read all the stories, I am really glad I did.
As you would expect some were more to my taste than others. I'm not going to single too much out but I really did enjoy the Rat Catcher trilogy - and yes I read the whole book in the order it was presented so I didn't skip ahead to read all three in one go.
They all share a theme - escape - and in some of the stories this is more obvious than in others. It was an eclectic mix of how this theme was delivered - in genre, length and style - and due to their length it is hard to say much more about each individual story for fear of injecting spoilers.
All the usual things I say in a review don't really work for a collection - yes, characters were good but there isn't much time to really get to know them in only a couple of pages. There were definitely characters that I would like to get to know better so I guess that's a good sign.
Pacing is also different again due to the length of the individual offerings but, as with most shorts, there are no wasted words. There can't be!
Ok so one or two, and I'm not naming names, did leave me a little flat but I think it's more a me thing (I didn't get it) rather than the author's fault. Probably.
All in all, I'm so glad I too a chance on this and as well as enjoying it, it has also given me the confidence to try more collections in the future. I guess its work here is done...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

In Naomi Ishiguro’s debut collection of short stories, we encounter a world of fantasy and fairy tale, where characters and their worlds are slightly out of the ordinary. As ever, short story collections generally have some good and some not so good, and this was no exception. The overall standard, however, makes Ishiguro a writer of note and one to watch for the future.

In ‘Wizards’ a lonely young boy is obsessed with wizards, whilst a hipster Tarot reader is busy trying to seduce a client. When their worlds collide, it leads to a devastating outcome. In ‘Bear’ a man becomes increasingly perturbed by an oversized teddy bear bought by his wife, which is moved from room to room until it finally ends up in the bedroom. A story concerning a rat catcher and a power struggle in an unnamed kingdom comes in three parts, dispersed throughout the collection. And other stories feature a man convinced he is disintegrating, a young boy who is asked to draw a picture of ‘The Unknown’, and a high-flying IT worker who becomes hooked on caffeine.

There are nods and allusions to fairy tales; the obvious one being the Rat Catcher story, but another story begins: ‘Once upon a time, there lived an extremely gifted eleven-year-old called Jamie.’ The stories bring to mind Angela Carter, but with a definite millennial twist. The characters are isolated, lost, trapped; birds and animals are a common theme, flight a dominant metaphor. There are moments of clarity, of understanding, but these more often than not are at the precise moment of danger or crisis.

This is clearly the work of a gifted writer, and whilst not all perhaps have the same impact, the stories are compelling and dark, stylishly written and giving enough depth to the characters in a short space of time that they hold your attention. Ishiguro has said that she is writing a full-length novel, which I look forward to immensely. An engaging and involving collection, this is definitely worth and read. 4 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

I think it's almost inevitable with story collections that you will like some and you won't others. It was the case here. But, I really enjoyed Ishiguro's writing style. I'd read more from her.
My favorite story was the couple with the bear. Overall, it was a good story collection and I think there were more enjoyable ones than the ones I didn't like.
Thanks a lot to the publisher and netgalley for this copy.

I really enjoy a good short story, and there were certainly some in this collection that were very good. As is the case with short story collections though, there were some I just didn't enjoy as much.

Ishiguro has a really good writing style, and there were some interesting ideas. I particularly liked the little boy & space story, and the married couple with the bear. The rat catcher didn't appeal to me, and that rather discoloured my view of the book.

I would definitely read more by Ishiguro, and it would be interesting to see what direction she would take if she wrote a novel.

Escape Routes, by Naomi Ishiguro is a collection of short stories, each of which have a fantastical or mystical element that it features. Normally, I write very long reviews but for this I figured a mini review would be much better for a few reasons:

Firstly, It contains multiple, easy to spoil short stories that I cannot go into detail about without giving away significant aspects.
Secondly, because there are a lot of different characters due to the numerous stories.
Finally, because, while the writing is amazing and the stories are perfect for such a collection, this was not for me- and by that I mean I am not a short story person and I found that because of that I couldn’t connect well with the stories in general but I did respect and understand them.
Despite this not being the best option for me personally, I do believe it deserves four stars! And here is why:

— Incredibly Captivating, Beautifully Immersive And Gorgeously Decriptive —
The Writing Style. Naomi Ishiguro is a magnificent writer and this collection illustrates her talent wonderfully. Her writing is incredibly captivating, beautifully immersive and gorgeously decriptive. The writing is what made me push through and finish the book because it was just so pleasing to read and really hooked you. Should she write a full length novel, I would definitely buy it because I absolutely adored her style and loved the whimsical mystery combined with the harsh and emotive tone. The balance was very unique and well crafted.

— Interesting And Intriguing —
The Stories. Despite not being for me, the stories themselves are incredibly unique and interesting. If you love ambiguous, mystical stories that leave you with a sense of yearning but also understanding then you will love this. Each story is interesting and intriguing, the Ratcatcher ones were probably my favourite as they had dark, vicious and creepy undertones, but they were all very original and definitely worth the read. The pacing for each story is well done, and the order of the stories helps balance out the pacing and keeps you interested. Overall, if you love short story collections then I would definitely recommend this to you!

–Complex Characters That Are Very Layered —
The Characters. The stories are relatively character driven which is great, specifically for the types of stories this collection includes. The characters are at the core of the stories, their minds, their thoughts, their emotions are key to the development and it works wonderfully. Overall, the characters are very interesting and very different from each other allowing you to easily separate the stories, they are also unique and their motivations are intriguing. The Ratcatcher stories in particular have some complex characters that are very layered despite the short length of the tale, and yet they still maintain a sense of mystery about them. Both the stories and the characters seem to hold specific morals that are powerful at the end of the stories and the overall point of the stories are easy to recognise and adds a great depth to them.

The ambiguity of the tales, or the moral greyness, general grey line that exists creates an interesting atmosphere that makes you think about the stories, their morals and life. The mystical element adds another layer to the tales and creates a unique sense of satisfaction but also a sense of unfinished business, which works well with the stories overall.

Overall. While this was not for me personally, I cannot dispute the richness of the stories or the beauty of the writing. This is the perfect choice for short story lovers who enjoy a fantastical or magical element to their stories. Each tale is incredibly rich and immersive with a unique story and interesting characters.

I received an eARC of #EscapeRoutes by #NaomiIshiguro from #Netgalley @headlinepg #Headline @TinderPress #TinderPress in exchange for an honest review.

This review is also on my blog/Goodreads (linked) and on twitter.