The darkness of Wallis Simpson and other stories

the long version

Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American woman for whom Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, ended her life as the prisoner of her lawyer who would not allow anyone - friend, foe or journalist - to visit her in her Paris flat. Rose Tremain takes this true-life account and transforms it into fiction: a tale of a dying, embittered woman who has forgotten the love of the king who gave up an empire for her. The other stories in this collection range over a variety of themes: an East German border guard, redundant after the Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, imagines that he might still have a purpose in life. He tries to reach Russia by bicycling across the hostile wastes of Poland. A jilted man gets his revenge. A baby grows wings. A character in an Impressionist painting escapes from his "frame"--Or does he? And there's a Christmas story set in a seedy hotel.