Admirers of Catherine Cookson's writing are now greeting every new book that appears with a mixture of pleasure and sadness: pleasure that the standard o f these posthumous books has been so consistently high, and sadness that the supply of unpublished works must soon be exhausted. The Simple Soul is a diverting collection of stories set against the background of locales familiar to Cookson's fans, principally London, the South Coast and the Northeast. One of the author's particular specialities was always the saga that spanned a considerable period of time, and even these short pieces bring that skill into play (the timescale of the stories stretches from the 1920s to the late 1990s). In the piece that bears the name of the collection, Richard is a family man whose happiness has deserted him, and musing on his unhappy marriage, he calls on an office colleague for whom he has never previously had much time. The encounter leads to a crucial reassessment of his relationship with his wife and their entire marriage. It's a mark of Cookson's skill that the narrative here (more than strong enough for an entire novel) is handled with a conciseness and sensitivity that perfectly fits the brief tale. And that's also true of the three stories that make up The Forbidden World, which stretch across several decades, and act as snapshots of changing attitudes to marriage and pregnancy. All of these tales have the characteristic Cookson touch: a wry, affectionate attitude to her characters that gives them all a truthfulness and solidity. Some readers balk at short story collections; Cookson fans would be doing themselves a disservice if they let such prejudices steer them away from this book. -Barry Forshaw.