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Unlike the pilgrims in Chaucer\u2019s Canterbury Tales<\/em>, the characters in Maggie Harris\u2019 collection of short stories Canterbury Tales on a Cock Crow Morning<\/em> not only arrive in Canterbury but take up residence in the city. For many, circumstances beyond their control have brought them to this place; indeed more than one character is bemused at finding themselves in such a provincial town. The majority of the characters are at the most only a few generations from being immigrants so flavour the tales with rich dialects and diverse traditions. Yet the actual predicaments they face are universal.\u00a0 Thus we have a concerned parent Mr Wo, proprietor of a Chinese takeaway worried about his spoilt daughter forgetting her own culture; a women\u2019s group inspiring an unhappy wife to make changes in her life; and a woman of a certain age feeling like a street woman<\/em> as she waits for her lover, a Spanish musician, in the precincts of the cathedral.<\/p>\n Harris has the ability to comfortably inhabit the skins of both her male and female characters. Like all good short story writers she launchers the reader into the heart of the narrative quickly either by establishing a character\u2019s personality and background as in the case of Eliot in \u2018This Mother Country Business\u2019 or by taking us into a particular predicament as with the mother in \u2018Guitar Hero\u2019 whose thirteen year old daughter has absconded with friends to audition for a music video in a garage in Essex. In many of the tales these are shown to be seminal events in the characters lives. Although short and some are a mere few pages long, these narratives are absorbing.<\/p>\n I feel what makes these tales so unique is the way the characters\u2019 cultural backgrounds colour such events.\u00a0 Thus in \u2018Guitar Hero\u2019 the disappearance of the thirteen year old daughter co-incides with the reappearance of Leon the girl\u2019s \u2018baby father\u2019 after many years. When Carissa is found in the world of gangster rappers it is Leon, a musician who uses his experience \u2018and did the guy thing. The fist shake, the smile, the whisper to the Gatekeeper\u2019 thereby allowing her mother to extricate her daughter from the situation.<\/p>\n Many characters are haunted by memories of their countries of birth. In the\u00a0 eponymous\u2019 A <\/em>Canterbury Tale on a Cockcrow Morning\u2019 Harris skilfully blends dialect with standard English as the main character\u2019s narrative is interpreted by a friend thereby emphasising the problem immigrants have making themselves understood in another tongue .\u00a0 The need to repress this past is engaged with in \u2018This Mother Country Business.\u2019 We are given a brief but telling account of Eliot and his struggle to assimilate and make something of himself in the UK.\u00a0 Having reached a degree of security, a letter from \u2018Guyana \u2018threatens to shake up Eliot\u2019s life, unopened it is the catalyst for memories of adolescent love that he has striven to bury. \u00a0In \u2018Sugar Water\u2019 we meet Eliot again; elderly now and widowed he has more time to dwell upon his childhood in Guyana as he compares the landscape to that of a dreary rainy Canterbury. He becomes haunted by a red figure selling \u2018The Big Issue \u2018on the streets. When he inadvertently knocks the girl down he feels compelled to help her because\u2019 not everyone was given a second chance\u2019 and Eliot believes that he was given just that by coming to the UK.<\/p>\n Such serious subjects are not necessarily told in a down beat manner. In many of the narratives Harris blends humour with pathos. Indeed some of the stories, much like the original Canterbury Tales, are absurdly humorous including one with \u00a0a dog as\u00a0 narrator \u00a0and in \u2018Samantha and The Cockerel\u2019, a\u00a0 battle between the nouveau riche wife of an MP and a farm holder with a particularly vocal cockerel.<\/p>\n The constant in all the stories is Canterbury itself. Harris makes good use of authentic names and landmarks throughout the city which is satisfying for locals and also introduces the city to readers unfamiliar with the place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n