Strikingly good short stories by Tom Hanks

TURNS out double Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks is not only a film star of note and a jolly nice chap, but a surprisingly fine writer. Is there no end to the talent of this extraordinarily gifted man? If I were feeling less festive, I’d mumble about it being just so – well, unfair.

is an astonishing discovery. Short stories are hard to get just right. The theme running through this eccentric, sometimes connected, and often nostalgic set of stories, is that of typewriters – huge, heavy old-fashioned machines we all used in noisy newsrooms of early days in journalism. They are tough, and don’t need electricity to work. You may remember an early scene in

in which Hanks starred (his Oscar wins were for

and Hanks’s character, a US Captain, flings the typewriter of a map-reader onto the landing fields of Normandy in 1944, saying he wouldn’t be needing that. Filming this scene must have hurt Hanks, because he has a passion for antique and collectible typewriters of which he owns hundreds, and some of them appear in some of the stories.

Some stories reflect his childhood, a few are wry commentaries on movie life; but most are generous, humane and occasionally funny diversions into what goes on in Hanks’s mind.

Stephen Fry said of this book that “I blink, bubble and boggle in amazed admiration.” Me too.