Provenance — David Belbin

David Belbin's stories have appeared in many books and anthologies, including Heinemann's 'Best Short Stories of the Year'. Here, they are collected for the first time, together with four substantial new stories about contemporary life in the UK.I've no idea why David Belbin isn't a household name, but 'Provenance' deserves to make him one. Across 25 years of work his voice is unfailingly, painfully true to life, unshowily thoughtful and suffused with a flavour of the East Midlands, making for a consistently affecting and often surprising read.'Matt Merritt (author 'A Sky Full of Birds' in the Big Issue's books of the year, 2016)'There are some wonderful stories here... Belbin has a great eye for the nuances of the way we live and how we speak. We find facebook, marriage equality, wikipedia, the daily flotsam and jetsam of modern life.' James Moran: BBC Radio'They’re tightly written and don’t waste words. Belbin’s skill at dealing with the complexities of relationships, and often suggesting the tensions and undercurrents beneath what might appear to be ordinary surfaces, is what makes the stories so readable.' Jim Burns, The Northern Review of Books'There's such a soul-shuddering realism and attention to detail in these stories, they should come with some kind of mental health warning, especially for men in their 40s or 50s.' Martin Stannard (author 'Poems for the Young at Heart')