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Several characters appear repeatedly over the course of the 17 stories in Tom Hanks’s debut short-story collection, Uncommon Type. The best story in the book by some distance has already appeared in the New Yorker. Alan Bean Plus Four suggested that Hanks, always a likable presence on screen, might also be a half-decent writer. Elsewhere, the prose is a little shakier. The dustiness that surrounds the whole project finds its way into the language, not only the voice of Hank Fiset – and his tone grates from the first, “So many rumours here at da Paper!” – but also in a certain antique, rather hammy style that seeps from one story to the next.
Hanks’s book reached me the same day that a group of children’s authors protested against the celebrity-heavy line-up of the annual World Book Day selection, which picked Julian Clary and Clare Balding over more established writers. I tend to think that anything that gets people reading ought to be embraced, and if Hanks turns people on to the short form, then we should be thankful. At the same time, there will be those who pick up this book instead of, say, Madame Zeroby Sarah Hall or Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees, the two story collections that have left the greatest impression on me this year.