
I’m a very recent convert to Callahan and his place, but I already adore it. These stories, all centred around Callahan’s Place, its weird and wonderful regulars and how they all go out of their way to help others are a joy to read. Warm, witty and humanist, Robinson shows a depth of feeling and empathy that really resonates with me. And the puns, oh goodness, the marvellous truly awful puns! I love puns (even if I’m not very good at them myself) so seeing them celebrated here was a(nother) wonderful thing about the book.
I’ve read many of the stories here in another collection but this is a superset of that, containing all the stories from there and a few others. This means that I can give away the other book, to let somebody else experience the joy of finding Callahan’s Place while I go on and get hold of both the Lady Sally and Mary’s Place books to continue the journey.
The unofficial motto of Callahan’s Place is that pain shared is lessened while joy shared is increased. I’ll get a glass of something, step up to the chalk line and raise a toast to that any day.