Hype
About Open Up
The stories in Open Up are funny, sad, complex, unexpected, and worthy of multiple readings. They’re also bloody brilliant.
—Jon McGregor
This brilliant, funny, unsettling book is a work of deep psychological realism and a philosophical inquiry at the same time. Thomas Morris is a master of the contemporary short story, and the stories in this collection are his best yet.
—Sally Rooney
Such a fierce and tender suite of stories – young boys & lost young men, the psychic effects of poverty and deprived childhoods, and the struggle to love well. Plus a standout story about seahorses. Welsh wizardry from Thomas Morris.
—Lucy Caldwell
Thomas Morris is incredibly gifted... Open Up not only confirms his unique skill and sensitivity as a writer, these stories positively redefine masculism, taking apart identity constructions, exploring conflicted territories, and offering up nuanced, progressive perspectives. It’s so heartening to read his work.
—Sarah Hall
The stories in Thomas Morris’s Open Up are capable of both astounding imaginative flourishes and evoking the quietest moments of everyday intimacy with heartbreaking attentiveness. These stories are always pleasurably off-kilter, as gently acerbic and sadly wise about the world as the work of George Saunders, Wendy Erskine and Etgar Keret, but written with an assuredness and poignancy that is all Morris’s own.
—Colin Barrett
With precision, wry humour and a generous heart, Morris visits life's agonies and ecstasies. This diverse and surprising collection is bound together by a strangely prelapsarian hopefulness from which, at any moment, we might fall.
—Nathan Filer
Thomas Morris’s second collection of stories, opens and closes with two of the best I’ve ever read… a writer beyond compare.
—Ali Smith, New Statesman, Books of the Year
Across the collection, the clarity and feeling with which Morris writes about south Wales, and his broader commitment to using short fiction to examine a place and its people, put me in mind of James Joyce's landmark 1914 collection Dubliners.
―Financial Times
Open Up is truly a descent into an underworld, each story darker and more punishing than the last. . . After finishing this collection, I had two main conclusions. I no longer despair for the future of male fiction writing and I can't wait to read the novel Morris has in him.
—Literary Review
[Morris] articulates loneliness and the desire to feel connected to someone with great delicacy, subtly highlighting the early traumas that might make connection difficult [...] It's a fine study of young men not quite living their lives.
―The Guardian
If his first collection [was] the work of a master plumber, the second is that of a diviner […] a tender, tragicomic delight.
—Martin Doyle, The Irish Times
[T]his new volume is poignant, surprising and thoughtful […] Morris’s skill lies in how he’s able to draw out the love and optimism and hope in the middle of all life’s bullshit.
—BookMunch
…thrilling… rewarding… impressive… has the same probing intensity as his debut, but the stories feel risker, an author opening himself up to new forms and styles with a notable playfulness and ingenuity.
—Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
Open Up sits in the tradition of great Celtic storytelling… The lyrical spareness of his prose elicits only the purest empathy, and there is a sense always that in each of the stories every detail, every image, has had to earn its place… ‘Aberkariad’ feels at once classic and thoroughly unique.
—RTÉ Book of the Week
… a subtle collection, with each story as meticulously constructed as a Swiss watch; one story in particular, the seahorse-led tale of a single father and his boys, ‘Aberkariad’ is a standout not just of the collection, but […] one of the greatest short stories I’ve ever read
—Barry Pierce, AnOther Magazine
An eclectic, dazzling collection […] mind-bendingly wonderful.
—Gary Raymond, BBC Radio Wales Arts Show
Brilliantly crafted… A completely original, at times agonising, yet completely brilliant collection of short stories. Morris succeeds in creating moments of genuine emotional intensity for his characters, each at a crucial juncture in their own understanding of themselves, and the people and the world around them.
—Jonathan Lee, Nation.Cymru
About We Don’t Know What We’re Doing
‘Morris’s masterly first book shows a literary virtue that will never falter: interest in other people. A rich sympathy for the individual goes with a fascination for how people fit together in communities, expressed with marvellous grace and wit.’
— Phillip Hensher
‘Heart-hurtingly acute, laugh-out-loud funny, and one of the most satisfying collections I’ve read for years.’
— Ali Smith, Guardian Books of the Year
‘Morris manages intimate detail with exquisite skill and emotional control. He has a special talent for rendering small moments of drama, giving them a dramatic force that makes this first book of stories really impressive and memorable.’
—Colm Tóibín, Irish Independent Books of the Year
‘Real, dazzling, insouciant brilliance … an important new voice in Welsh literature.’
—Wales Art Review
‘I loved the characters in We Don’t Know What We’re Doing … they are mostly young and insecure, yet capable of perplexing insight.’
—Sara Baume, Guardian Books of the Year
‘We Don’t Know What We’re Doing is mordantly funny and achingly true. The characters are with me many months after reading.’
—Marcel Theroux, Observer Books of the Year
‘Beguiling [and] spellbinding … Thomas Morris does for his Welsh home town what Dylan Thomas did for Swansea … The two bear comparison for their wit, warmth, originality and verbal dexterity.’
—TLS
‘A graceful debut [that] captures the banalities and blessings of ordinary life.’
—Guardian
‘We Don’t Know What We’re Doing is wry and shrewd and unstintingly empathic.’
—Lisa McInerney, Irish Independent Books of the Year
‘A truly marvellous thing … Belongs on the shelf next to Under Milk Wood and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio … A very exciting moment for literature in Wales.’
—New Welsh Review
‘Morris infuses each of his judiciously weighted sentences and paragraphs with both a forensic melancholy and tender humour … His characters are often diffident, bungling, wracked with longing, frankly unsure of who they are, who they should become, and how on earth they will get there, but he stays with them in their incertitude and ambivalence, delineating their soul-deep confusion with expert lucidity and subtle empathy, and never, ever judging.’
—Colin Barrett, Irish Times
‘Generous, precisely wrought and full of feeling … this is a book about certainly-drawn uncertain people, in a certain place, and you’ll search ages before you find another collection that so well evokes a place through its people.’
—Gavin Corbett, Irish Times
‘Morris’ fresh, direct writing style feels brand new, slamming the reader up against the chaos of his characters’ inner lives in a way that leaves you exhilarated and bruised.’
—Metro
‘Beguiling … Morris has a fantastic, near forensic eye for the ordinary details of life.’
—Sunday Telegraph
‘Beautifully written [and] very funny … Fresh and at times brilliant.’
—Irish Times
‘I was impressed by the sheer guts, as well as the sheer excellence, of Thomas Morris’s debut collection, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing.’
—Belinda McKeon, Irish Times Books of the Year
‘Deep and heartfelt … Tender and poignant [and] very funny.’
—Sunday Irish Independent
‘A beautiful, emotionally searching collection of stories about youth, responsibility and growing up.’
—Telegraph
‘These ten stories are grounded and utterly glorious … they are distinct but all of a piece, delights to savour.’
—Literary Review
‘A young writer whose descriptions of the mundane magic of everyday life makes one blissed out beyond envy.’
—Julie Burchill, Spectator Books of the Year
‘Funny, sad, and really very good.’
—Totally Dublin
‘It is the straight, deadpan delivery which sets the tone, allowing the characters to speak for themselves … You’ll glide through the stories.’
—Dublin Inquirer
‘Be warned, these [stories] will keep you up reading all night.’
—Pool
‘Morris expertly explores the big themes of ordinary life through a series of original, unexpected episodes. The stories feel thoroughly authentic and the dialogue is witty and real … Touching, sad and lively, this is a great debut from a formidable talent.’
—Winq
‘Thomas Morris’ Caerphilly is a town of first loves, last loves and all degrees of mistakes. Each resident is trying to figure it all out and, in some way, they seem to be doing that together.’
—Buzz