“… a truly excellent collection, tightly written and darkly funny, that would continue to be rewarding however many times you read it. The opening story, These Boots are Made for Walkin’, sets the tone for the book, with its humorous, subversive take on patriarchy…The voice is strong, and the author is good at capturing natural voices, as in the brilliant, single-sentence story Double Lives... Often there’s a darkness in the humour, and stories like Yellow Straw, Red Straw have the unsettling feel of early Ian McEwan tales…It is fiction that wittily exposes the darker side of the ‘70s, with little time for nostalgia, and it sustains its quality throughout.”

International Rubery Book Award

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“It’s hard to beat Aldridge-Morris’ trademark mix of gritty reality, humour and hope.”

Cole Beauchamp, New Flash Fiction Review

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“In twenty-nine flash fictions, Aldridge-Morris offers a master class on the form…Enough cannot be said about Aldridge-Morris’s ability to pin an era. She is simply a wizard of time-and-place vibe.”

DE Hardy, Claudine Literary Magazine

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“Particularly impressive is Aldridge-Morris’s use of setting details not only to evoke an era—those “brown curtains and burnt-orange sofas,” oh my!—but also to add emotional weight and heft to these very short stories…there’s a timelessness to these stories of women and girls …In Cold Toast, they stand defiant, refusing to disappear.”

Sarah Freligh, Bending Genres

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“Kathryn Aldridge-Morris’s first flash collection is a punchy and cohesive delight for the senses, peppered with dark wit… In Cold Toast [her] stories emerge in hyperfocus and, long after they close, linger.”

Amanda Krupman, SmokeLong Quarterly

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“Virtually all the stories in this debut collection set off a flurry of goosebumps. The voice in each piece is astounding. It’s growly and defiant, and smacks at the kernel of what it is to be a woman surviving, loving and pissing about in this mad world.”

Kik Lodge, Author of The Bully in my Pillow & Scream if You Want To

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“Brilliant debut collection (got such a strong chronological momentum and connected characters/objects it reads more like a novella in flash to me) and absolutely loved it! Highly recommend!”

Alison Woodhouse, author of The House on the Corner

 

“Electric stories of rebellion and compromise fill this volume. I enjoyed every one!”

Myna Chang, Author of The Potential of Radio and Rain

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“Aldridge-Morris creates tender and strong stories which feature young women negotiating their way through the changing norms of the time. Recommended.”

Bronwen Griffiths, author of Here Casts No Shadow & Longshore Drift