This collection includes four stories by Adam Mars-Jones - "Slim", "An Executor", "A Small Spade" and "The Break" and two stories by Edmund White - "Palace Days" and "An Oracle".

I came across this book in the library when I was checking what Adam Mars-Jones they had and as I saw the collection included White's "Palace Days" which I remembered reading years ago in an anthology of gay literature I decided it might be interesting to read the stories. Which I then proceeded to do.

But at some point I started wondering why a collection of AIDS themed short stories had been published in the first place. It must have seemed topical in 1987, I wouldn't know, I was seven at the time. If we assume that good literature reflects the times in which it was written and published, then of course there's nothing strange in putting together six stories by two known gay writers; it would be noticed and it would sell and the writers would be describing experiences familiar to people at the time. But having this book in my hands in 2004 I felt uncomfortable about the whole idea - why would AIDS stories have to be put together, published in one volume, as if it would put everything right, as if it would signal that the matter has been done and dusted by the writers and publishers who then can move on. Maybe it's just me getting too tangled up with everything.

The stories are not bad at all, in a way I got a lot more out of "Palace Days" this time than I did as a teenager. Mars-Jones's stories were rather good too; looking at the publishing history of the stories more closely I discovered I have probably read "Slim" in an anthology of gay and lesbian literature but it hadn't had any greater impact on me. ( )