Reviewed by Frances Sheridan Goulart
Curious Events Lately Occurring In This Neighbourhood:
surreal and humorous short fiction
by Tom Cox
Breakthrough Books
Sept 2026, 193 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1066743414,
Nobody is more on board for British whimsy than I am! Think Monty Python, Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers. Heck, even animated whimsy with heart, like the charming beagle Gromit and his eccentric cheese-obsessed human inventor- owner Wallace of the Wallace and Gromit series.
Author Tom Cox is right in there with the best of them. And this latest book is a valuable addition to anybody’s TBR shelf, for stress relief, as an anhedonia antidote, or just a kickstart for your on-the-fritz funny bone.
The author’s name is new to me, I am surprised to admit, because Cox’s goofy, solipsistic clowning short stories (some no more than a paragraph) are so captivating. You are guaranteed to read and giggle or skim and smile. At least a number of celebrated writers who have read Cox have done just that.
According to Stephen Fry (on the Praise) page, Tom Cox is “one of the most reliably readable and enchanting and hilarious writers around.” Similarly, on the same page, David Sedaris (a writer who makes me laugh out loud) says Cox made him “laugh out loud.” And Kate Atkinson simply says “A very funny writer.”
High praise indeed. Cox has sixteen books to his name, including the London Times bestseller The Good, the Bad and the Furry (2013) and Help the Witch (2018), which won a Shirley Jackson Horror Writing Award. Curious Events is Cox’s second collection of short fiction, and the back cover promises “ …it will take you on a wild ride through the portals of his psychedelic imagination…”.
He does not disappoint. And neither does illustrator Joe McLaren, whose mini pen-and-ink, woodcut-style illustrations throughout are a nice enhancement.
Cox is an author who wears many hats, besides the jester’s. He was the UK’s Guardian newspaper’s youngest ever music critic. He also writes about wildlife, rural living, folk music, golf, and cats! In fact, Cox gained widespread recognition for his books about his rescue cats ( including Under the Paw (2008), Talk to the Tail (2011), The Good, the Bad and the Furry (2013). Going on to turn out surreal, landscape-focused novels like Villager (2022) and 1983 (2024), whose magical tone and prose reminded some readers of Max Porter’s Lanny. (Porter, a fellow Brit, is possibly better known for his award-winning 2016 novel Grief is a Thing with Feathers). This was followed by Everything Will Swallow You (2025). Cox quit writing for national newspapers in 2015 to publish his essays, short fiction, and ramblings directly to readers online. Although he shuns social media pretty much, you can get Cox in a box, as it were, by subscribing to his newsletter on his website.
The first of the 52 stories here (most are very short, true exercises in micro fiction) is “Letter from Badger,” a love letter (filled with detailed grievances) to the homeowner from the unacknowledged long-time badger in his garden who has grown weary of being ignored. And so taken for granted. It is sweet and funny, even if you have no fondness for real-life badgers.
Or, when life gets too adult, too serious, and too void of fantasy, you could turn to the two page-long short stories–” Administration Blues” and “Command Mission Accepted.” Pages 54-55. Super silly quickies.
You don’t even have to understand all of these stories. Cases in point–“The Aloof Housemate”, “Now Get back to it, you Fucking Baby”. And “Vandal”. I haven’t the foggiest what the plots or messages hidden in this micro fiction are, but did it dampen my appreciation for all the rollicking absurdity here? Not a whit.
So what’s the juiciest part here, dear reader, if you are going to jump right in? (There is no order to follow here, so it’s every reader for him/her/themself). I liked these in no particular order:
“The Death of the Novel” in which the narrator, a reporter for Greenhouse Quarterly, kills Cox and throws his body down a well in his garden.
“The Hagstone”, in which two couples exchange partners as a lark and the wife of the narrator discovers a hagstone which, when used as a magic magnifying glass, tells the user if what he or she sees is actually masquerading as something else. Indeed, one of the partners turns out not to be a wife or woman at all, but an American refrigerator. “ [I realized] that the industrial rattling I used to hear in the middle of the night was not a ghost, but merely Mandy… refreshing her ice cube compartment.”
“Hedgecock’s Trip Down Memory Lane,” delivers the quirky and macabre, and all in a brisk page and a half. A trip, indeed. “For the first time in all those years”, it concludes, “he began to wonder if he had been wrong to murder all thirteen of his workmates in their sleep.”
I would have liked to have seen a table of contents in the front or an index in the back, but that is my only quibble, and that aside, that still leaves many big and small stories with one-of-kind titles for you to explore, including (but not limited to):
“Brief Stories Concerning the Undervalued Lives of Sheep”
“Feral Children”
“The Box of Frogs”
“Memories of My Time Living in Edwardian Britain”
You can subscribe to Cox’s newsletter at www.Tom-Cox.com.
About the reviewer: Frances Sheridan Goulart is a nutritionist and personal chef and the author of sixteen other books on health, food, and cooking. She lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Visit the author’s website at: greenapronfood.com