This powerful collection of stories hit me hard, and I think will do the same for anyone, men and women, leaving you thoughtful about certain relationships in your own life, and about people you may have known in these sorts of troubles, perhaps even have tried to help.

Most of the tales are narrated in the first person and by women. They seek escape from abuse and manipulation, and not always from husbands and ‘lovers’. One tormentor turns out to be a therapist, another a female ‘friend’. We meet survivors bonding in the soul-destroying shelters. We watch on as mothers, themselves survivors of dire relationships, struggle and fail to save their daughters from also being undervalued and misused.

The belief by so many victims that the blows dealt to them are somehow their own fault permeates these stories. Their tenuous grasp of self esteem, even when they’ve perhaps had years to feel safe again, is vividly portrayed in ‘Bad Good Friday’ in which a woman tries to cudgel up a sense of grief for her dead father, who we gather was cold and cruel, while all the long night someone’s locked up dog howls with its own misery.

The last three tales have a lighter touch which leads you out from the others with a sense of relief, even a smile. Two are narrated by males, and one in the third person. While this change in form might seem at first discordant, I found it fitting. A wounded person often needs a wholly different perspective - usually that of someone who at last cares, to find the sense of hope the sub-title of these stories refers to.
( )

All Because of You is a collection of short stories by Isobel Blackthorn. The organizing theme for the stories is seeking refuge, whether women seeking refuge in a shelter, a daughter seeking it with her mother or an immigrant seeking refuge in another country.

Some of the stories were moving. I particularly liked the generational short story Mother’s Day that opened the collection. A woman and her daughter flee her abusive husband who is threatening to take the daughter away and her mother goes into shelter with her. Their closeness was deeply affecting.

The stories are organized into four thematic collections, Refugees, The Wayward Daughter, Abusers, and Hope. I find it odd that two of the stories that showed there is hope were narrated by men and the third, the person who found hope is not the person the story is about. That is sad. Most of these stories are sad.

The Wayward Daughter was particularly disturbing because it is the story of the headlong pursuit of the wrong man. The collection of stories of Abusers had one particularly powerful story where a woman who desperately needs therapy goes to an abusive therapist. I guess if my anxieties came from several disastrous relationships with men, I would not go to a male therapist.

While there are some affecting and emotionally moving stories in this collection, particularly the first two stories, Mother’s Day and The Moon Circle, some of the stories were not particularly interesting. A few did not really fit into the collection. Strangely, the title story “All Because of You” was the most discordant.

The prose is fine. It’s the actual story that fails for me. Blackthorn is best with dialogue, including the alternately amusing and heartbreaking run-on dialogue of the hairdressing gossip. What is missing for me, though, is an understanding of why some of the stories need telling. There feels like there is no “there” there and I was bored. In truth, I kept going to finish mainly because there was not that much left to read. I am glad I did because the last story is another one of the better ones.

I was provided a review copy by the publisher through NetGalley. ( )