The first audio short story collection by Tim Jeffreys for sometime this, as he’s been busy with longer and non-audio forms of fiction just lately, and in The Other Door we see a slight departure from his past work. There’s less (well none in fact) traditional ghost stories, nor any summer spooky strangeness (for want of a better way to describe them) that marks much of his earlier collections. Instead TJ is developing the more secular fable/parable side of his fiction in quirky and surreal stories: exploring themes such as morality, mortality, alienation, psychoanalysm and dreams, which in fairness has always been there – just not as prominently as this. While this collection is less immediate than his last two they show an extra depth and conceptual development in his writing, which has to be commended. And upon a second listening I’ve warmed to the collection immensely. In fact I think I’d best describe The Other Door as a slow burn. TJ’s prose is literary, rich and evocative, his tales are rewarding, meaningful and intelligent: it’s good stuff. It’s a pity that there doesn’t appear to be an outlet for it in the wider fiction-land, but that’s their loss… and anyway I’m liking the DIY ethos. Proof that there might be legs in the self-publishing phenomenon yet…
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The best stories are: the title story ‘The Other Door,’ a Kafkaesque thing that brings to mind Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, ‘We are Three,’ a Freudian dreamland fable, and ‘Soft Clocks,’ a Daliesque nightmare, which has been aired before (somewhere in another collection) but seems to find its home here. Another interesting tale is ‘The Toymaker’s Ruin:’ a slightly confusing parable about… well several things (I think) but you can find out for yourself by buying yourself a copy 
As usual the narration is excellent and the recording is highly professional. TJ’s regular storytellers Mia Jaye and Josh Cass are both there and new boy Klemens Koehering adds an appropriate Teutonic tone to this collection.
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This CD can be found and bought at Tim Jeffreys’ lovely new website here, where every month he’s posting some examples of his fiction to read too.
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Reviews of his other CDs can be found by clicking on the audiobook tab on this blog.
