Review of "More Words Upon a Tombstone: A Collection of Short Stories," by Barry Jones

Review of

More Words Upon a Tombstone: A Collection of Short Stories, by Barry Jones ISBN 9781534966833

Five out of five stars

 This book contains a set of stories, roughly half are fiction and the other autobiographical. The author is a chemist, soccer coach/player and a world traveler, so the self-referential stories largely deal with those topics. Some of them are better than others, which is common for autobiographical shorts. The fictional elements are generally a combination, with experiences being embellished and adapted to create a story.

 By far, the best in the collection is the one that features a character called Nancy NoKnicks. The author is of Welsh extraction, so he is using the English abbreviation for knickers, their term for underwear. Nancy was a contestant in a beauty contest and she engaged in some chest exposure, but the hilarious part is about what was said when she was called before a disciplinary committee. The members of the committee were all male and the attempt of the questioner to be serious leads to some very funny double meanings.

 While all these stories are good, some are jewels, worthy of rereading several times. Jones is a talented writer, he often makes the routine sound more entertaining than it otherwise is. 

This book was made available for free for review purposes.