A Complete Success

Colette Paul

Book of the Month: October 2026

Reviewed by Veronique Kootstra

A Complete Success is the second short story collection by Glasgow-born author Colette Paul. Published by Batis Books, these well-observed snapshots by Paul, whose debut collection Whoever You Choose to Love was serialised on BBC Radio 4, deal with themes such as loneliness, grief and the complexity of love. Paul handles the challenging subject matters sensitively, respectfully and with a certain lightness that doesn’t diminish what the characters are going through. 

The mainly Glasgow based stories contain three elements – humour, minimalist language and ordinary character.  These in themselves are not a rarity in storytelling; Raymond Carver and Alice Munro immediately spring to mind, but when they come together in seemingly effortless unison like they do in Paul’s stories, it is truly something special.          

The humour is often subtle, weaving into the dialogue or in astute descriptions such as those in ‘The Tutor’, which opens with the protagonist attending a creative writing class. Anyone who’s ever gone to one will both chuckle and cringe at: ‘He called himself the Southside Scribe, and wrote poems about Celtic, big boobs, nagging wives, and beer.’ In the story ‘Diddled,’ the protagonist is at a party where she feels completely out of place. Her perception of the people there combined with the brief conversations she either engages in or observes, are funny but also bring up memories of similar situations in our own lives where we felt disconnected at a party and cunningly planned an exit strategy.    

The language in the stories is minimalist, making every word count whilst still evoking a range of emotions. The ending of the story, ‘Jeffrey’ is both lyrical and moving. ‘She lay in the darkness in that half-dreaming state where all the people who crowd your thoughts are both familiar and strange and you cannot tell where you start or they end’. This is a beautiful sentence in isolation, and as the conclusion to the story, has the power to move you to tears. Paul pulls you into every story from the first line until the very last. There is no excess, no descriptions that don’t deserve to be there.  

What makes this collection stand out is that each story feels fresh in the way Paul approaches some of the recurrent themes from a different angle or perspective. This in itself is not something new in short fiction – think of Lorrie Moore who has embodied heartbreak, relationships and loneliness in her stories for decades. What Paul executes extremely well is exploring various generations at different stages in their life. ‘Robert Wilson’s Last Weekend,’ is a beautiful story about, as the title suggests, the character’s last weekend but is also a tender love story about the life he shared with his wife. In the title story, ‘A Complete Success,’ the protagonist returns to Glasgow from L.A. to visit his mum in hospital and is confronted with the past he deliberately left behind: ‘His old life is untranslatable, and yet, it is here, waiting to be picked up again.’ This is an incredibly captivating line that pulls you further into this character’s story, raising not only intrigue what happened in his life before he left, but also creates a moment of reflection on our own life and the choices we’ve made.  

Paul skilfully invites you into the lives of these ordinary characters and while you might only stay with them for a brief, yet significant moment in their life, there is a real sense of connection that lingers even after you have left them to meet a new character in the next story. Paul has a profound understanding of what it is like to be human, how events can shape or change people’s lives, or both, but doesn’t provide all the answers. The stories and its characters make a lasting impression and have the power to evoke a whole range of emotions that stay with you after you have finished reading. That’s what makes this collection special and a must-read.

 A Complete Success is published by Batis Books

Veronique Kootstra is a writer and creative workshop facilitator.