A Soldier's Debt by Nick Warburton

A Soldier's Debt for me was the best - deeply satisfying. I was trying to work out why this was. One reason was the simplicity of the shape: without initially realising it, at every step we're moving towards the reuniting of father and son. Also the sense of restraint: we don't need to witness the reunion itself, nor are we taken too deeply into characters' backstory, although there is more than enough to make them feel substantial. Maybe it's that things move at a pace which seems right. We get the sense of the slightly superior woman, waiting for more important work, and the transition to understanding isn't forced. The play is also multilayered: more than one father-son relationship where communication is necessarily indirect. I also like the fact that the narrative voiceovers are given a context: that the ill-fitted librarian happens upon the doctor in the act of writing to his father. That uneasy flirting between librarian and doctor feels convincing too. And of course that could have been wrapped up so neatly but that possibility of a relationship is left open-ended. I suppose what I'm really saying is that however simple the overall shape the play never feels schematic and that the listener is trusted to fill in the spaces and make the connections, that story structure is not being hammered home at the expense of character. Also that it's about something profound and universal as well as being about a specific context. And of course for a story about the act of listening, the supreme importance of listening, what better medium than radio?

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Yes, that is it exactly: that play suggests, as the best short stories do, a whole world by judicious use of detail.

I recall reading once that short stories are more akin to poetry than novels - that all the elements have to be carefully chosen as anything illfitting or extraneous causes the whole thing to leak away. And Everything in A Soldier's Debt feels vital.