Me And My Short Stories

After the Gunshot

Story: After the Gunshot

Author: Lee Ji Myung

Collection: Words Without Borders

The current issue of the online magazine Words Without Borders looks at writing from North Korea and includes a mixture of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I tried out one of the stories on offer but, to be honest, I wasn't all that impressed.

A man attempts to smuggle drugs across the border but is spotted by soldiers and has to dive into a river to escape. Elsewhere, his lover waits for his return.

I cannot be sure but I suspect the translation is the problem here. It feels quite lifeless and without any real personality. Quite prefunctory. Any style the author may have injected into the story appears to have vanished.

This is a shame as I applaud what Words Without Borders is trying to do, bringing writing from around the globe to our computer screens. I will continue to read the work they showcase.

Rating: **

The Slave House

Story: The Slave House

Author: Charles Lambert

Collection: The Slave House

The ebook was supposed to be the saviour of the short story. By now we should all be reading them on our commute to work. It didn't happen. With so many full-length novels available at 99p or below, is it any wonder?

But could the ebook yet be the saviour of the novella? Readers seem perfectly happy to cough up a quid for 100 pages or so and Amazon have established a Kindle Singles range for precisely this sort of book, as well as long-form journalism, memoir and the like.

I have read my first Kindle Single, it is The Slave House by Charles Lambert, a dark tale of a gay man who takes a job teaching English in Portugal in the late 70s. There he finds a country coming to terms with the recent 'Carnation Revolution' and he attempts to navigate some sort of social life, despite not understanding the language nor the politics that surround him. Perhaps as a consequence of this he, sort of accidentally, embarks upon an affair with a fellow teacher. A woman.

This is a deliberately uncomfortable fish-out-of-water tale which may have been a bit too dark as a full-length novel but which the author pitches just right at this length. It captures that greyness of 1970s life, a greyness I remember as a young man, and you never quite know how it will end.

Something of substance to read when you have an hour or two to spare.

Rating: ****

Fjord of Killary

Story: Fjord of Killary

Author: Kevin Barry

Collection: Dark Lies the Island

When I mentioned I was about to give up on this decidedly average collection more than one person urged me to continue. So I did.

I needn't have bothered. This story - a poet buys a remote hotel on the edge of the only natural fjord in Ireland only to have a miserable time of it being annoyed by the locals and his Belorussian staff - is fine, it's OK, but it really isn't anything special and after reading 400+ stories for this blog I think I deserve something that is more than just sort of half-decent.

Barry, to his credit, is an easy read but there just isn't enough substance to these stories to stop them from going in one ear and out the other, so to speak.

Rating: ***

He

Story: He

Author: Dorris Lessing

Collection: Collected Stories Volume One: To Room Nineteen

I picked this up at the Staines train station charity bookshelf one night last week. I made a suitable donation for the retired train workers. It was very much a win-win situation.

As is my habit, I dipped into one of the shorter stories to try things out. Two women chat at the kitchen table. One of them has been left by her husband for the woman next door. They can hear the couple arguing through the walls.

This is a claustrophobic story of loss and resentment. It isn't an overly pleasant read but that is sort of the point.

Rating: ***

Wifey Redux

Story: Wifey Redux

Author: Kevin Barry

Collection: Dark Lies the Island

A husband narrates us through a digest version of his marriage to date and brings us to the present day: both he and wife a bit fatter, a little less in love but still happy, and a 17-year-old daughter who, much to her father's annoyance, if probably fucking her boyfriend in their back room. She's definitely giving him blow jobs if the graffiti on the bus stop is to believed.

As our narrator tries to comes to terms with his daughter's blossoming sexuality we get hints of a breakdown in the past and, when he has to intervene with the boyfriend, things get a bit fraught once more.

And it is all sort of OK without ever venturing into special territory. A couple of lines struck me as very good - I liked the idea of the DIY store 'shooting day-for-night' with its oppressive bright lights, for example - but the end result is just another average story, really.

I have now read two stories from this acclaimed collection. Not sure I'll bother to read any more.

Rating: ***

The Mathematics of Sunshine

Story: The Mathematics of Sunshine

Author: Tania Hershman

Collection: My Mother Was An Upright Piano

A female scientist spends 24 hours calibrating a neutrino counter. Her mind starts to go a bit wonky towards the end.

As does this story.

In a good way.

I have enjoyed most of the stories in this collection of very short shorts. Lots of variety and well worth checking out.

Rating: ***

Expectations

Story: Expectations

Author: Peter Stamm

Collection: We're Flying

Daphne can hear the person in the apartment above hers. She can hear footsteps, chairs dragging, the scrapes and clicks and cracks of everyday life. She has always assumed it to be an elderly woman making these noises but one day they meet and she discovers it to be a young man. She then finds herself self-conscious of the sounds she makes in her own apartment, assuming he can hear her taking a shower or flushing the toilet.

A friendship begins, then a courtship of sorts, and noise becomes part of their romance.

The opening tale in this new collection is deceptively simple. It feels like a series of scenes from a subtitled movie. It is very good, and full marks to Michael Hoffman for the translation. We're Flying is published today.

Rating: ****

Intercourse with Resuscitated Wife

Story: Intercourse with Resuscitated Wife

Author: Ben Marcus

Collection: The Age of Wire and String

This avant-garde story collection was first published in 1995 when the author was still in his 20s. I read it back then. I was also in my 20s. It was the most pretentious load of old cock I had read up to that point in my life.

It has now been reissued in a really rather handsome illustrated edition. Unfortunately the contents are still pretty much unreadable.

As far as I can tell, this story is about having sex with your dead wife in order to get the electricity working in your house again. It may not be, of course, it might be a metaphor for the rise of fascism in the 20th century or it could be an homage to something I am not clever or well-read enough to recognise. Whatever it is, it is so far up its own arse it is hardly worth retrieving.

I am giving this one star. It is awful. However, if you are a fan of David Foster Wallace then you might love this.

Rating: *

A Loyal Friend

Story: A Loyal Friend

Author: Tania Hershman

Collection: My Mother Was An Upright Piano

Three paragraphs which explore the fickleness of friendship.

Nicely done.

Rating: ***

Waiting

Story: Waiting

Author: Osamu Dazai

Collection: Online

I was directed towards this story by the excellent, and it really is excellent, Readings in Translated Japanese Literature blog. It would appear that the translator, Angus Turvill,  has popped it online for free. I urge you to check it out.

After war is declared, a young woman makes a 'pilgrimage' each day to the train station. There she waits for someone. Who? Well, that would spoil it for you and it is only a couple of pages long so you might as well read it yourself.

Delighted to have discovered a new, to me, Japanese author and have already added some of his books to my wishlist.

Rating: ****

Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre

Story: Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre

Author: Seth Fried

Collection: The Great Frustration: Stories

Every story in this collection has a cracking opening line. Try this for size:

Last year, the people in charge of the picnic blew us up.

See?

And if few of them manage to build on a promising start it is sort of OK as each story is pretty entertaining and off beat. In this one the townsfolk cannot resist attending the annual picnic at nearby Frost Mountain despite the fact that someone always dies in hideous circumstances - pulled apart by gorillas, carried off in hot air balloons, blown up by land mines and so on.

They feel compelled to attend and, as the story progresses, you discover even more sinister goings on behind the scenes. It feels a bit George Saunders (without being too proud of itself, like his stuff) and a bit Chuck Palahniuk (but not quite as in your face) and although it never quite rises above pretty good it is still a decent short story and I suspect others may enjoy it a lot more than I.

Rating: ***

We Will Be There

Story: We Will Be There

Author: Tania Hershman

Collection: My Mother Was An Upright Piano

The thing with very short fiction, and flash fiction in particular, is that it doesn't have long to make its impact. As a result, more thoughtful pieces, some of which may work in longer form, can come across as insubstatial. Prose poems more than stories.

Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but I think it can make them more throwaway and this is one such example. Just over a page long and yet I am struggling to remember what it is about. In fact, I am not sure it is about anything at all. Someone is brushing another person's hair and talking about a plane flight.

I am afraid this one went right over my head but I have enjoyed the other stories in the book so I will consider this merely a blip.

Rating: **

The King of Norway

Story: The King of Norway

Author: Amos Oz

Collection: Between Friends

Full marks to Chatto & Windus for hiding the fact that this is a story collection. Nowhere on the cover, blurb or inside is there a hint that the contents are eight short stories rather than one fat novel. It looks, feels and smells like a novel. Nicely done. Short stories don't sell. Novels do.

But surely anyone buying this thinking it is a novel will be pissed off that they have been duped? They may very well like the stories within but that is not what they purchased. I suspect there'll be some miffedness going on.

I read the opener, a tale of a middle-aged man living on a kibbutz, a man with a strange habit of sharing small titbits of world news to anyone who would listen. He is a bit of a figure of fun but then he finds a lady friend and everything looks set to change.

It is pretty good. Didn't blow me away but so few stories do. I'll read a couple more and see what happens.

Rating: ***

Reeling for the Empire

Story: Reeling for the Empire

Author: Karen Russell

Collection: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

In the Meiji era of Japan a shortage of silk worms leads to drastic measures. Young women are sold off to factories and undergo a transformation. Soon they are producing copious amounts of silk thread themselves.

This could have come straight from a Pan Book of Horror Stories from the 60s. Unnerving and odd.

Rating: ****

Jumping Jennifer

Story: Jumping Jennifer

Author: Adam Marek

Collection: Instruction Manual for Swallowing

I am three stories in to this collection and it is fast becoming one of the best I have read in the two and a bit years I have been writing this blog.

At a college campus a beautiful and popular girl falls from a sixth-floor window. Or did she jump?

The reactions of her classmates are surprising and disturbing and make this a most disconcering read.

Rating: ****

The Fifth Bee Gee

Story: The Fifth Bee Gee

Author: Peter Manson

Collection: Quick Fictions

A man commits suicide by inhaling a lethal dose of helium. Obviously suicide isn't funny but, on the other hand, this story is hilarous.

Bleak, I grant you, but hilarious nonetheless.

It is a very short story I discovered on the Quick Fictions app which is available for iPad, iPhone and iPod. It presents an array of stories, each under 300 words long, and I found plenty of good stuff on there. Well worth checking out.

Rating: ****

Julio Iglesias

Story: Julio Iglesias

Author: Haruki Murakami

Collection: Murakmai Diary

Another story from the Murakami Diary app. This one is about a couple who are being terrorised by a sea turtle (I assume it is of unusual size) and have run out of mosquito coils which, until now, have been the only deterrent.

But then the chap has a clever idea. I won't give it away but the clue is in the title.

I am loving the fact that Haruki Murakami is turning his hand to flash fiction. This one is great.

Rating: ****

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Story: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Author: Karen Russell

Collection: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Karen Russell's recent novel, Swamplandia, seemed to impress the critics. I have no idea if anyone actually bought it or not but I definitely detected a positive reception through the internet vibes so I shall assume it was reasonably popular.

This new story collection has the word 'vampires' in the title but those of you suffering from Twilight fatigue need worry not. The vampires in question pop up in the very first story and they don't have a glittery sheen, don't shag the married directors of their next movies and don't appear in adaptations of boring Don DeLillo novels.

No, these ones suck lemons.

Why do they suck lemons, Scott?

Well, that would spoil the surprise. Suffice to say that these are a pair, a married couple no less, of vampires who aren't like the others you've encountered. And their somewhat melancholy story is interesting and original without ever quite leaping off the page. I am sufficiently intrigued to read on.

Rating: ***

The Elasticity of Bone

Story: The Elasticity of Bone

Author: D.W. Wilson

Collection: Once You Break a Knuckle

D.W. Wilson won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2011 for a gritty road story which I thought was a bit of a pain, to be honest. Nonetheless, I somehow managed to put this collection on my Christmas wish list. I think I did it by mistake.

Anyway, it is here now so I might as well read the fucker. The first story, about a father and son who end up fighting each other in a judo tournament, is much less annoying that his prize-winning one. I'd even go as far as to say it is pretty good. I wasn't sure about it to start with, the two men verbally sparring and playfighting at home lacked any real punch (pun intended) but the story grew on me and by the time we reached the conclusion I was almost won over.

During my two years of reading and reviewing stories for this blog I have come across lots that were OK, pretty good, nice while I read them but soon forgotten, and this comes into that category. I suspect the answer to that age old question 'why don't short story collections sell as well as novels?' is 'because most of them are a bit, well, meh'. But perhaps I am just being cynical, or maybe I have read too many average stories when all I want is something a bit special to come along.

Ho hum.

Rating: ***

Wrench

Story: Wrench

Author: Haruki Murakami

Collection: Murakmai Diary

How's this for modern? This latest Murakami story is available exclusively on the new Murakami Diary app, a fancy new gadgety thing for your iPhone or iPad.

This first story appears on 13th January and tells of Mayumi, a young woman who has a tendency to smash the collarbones of men who bother her. With a large wrench.

It is very short, flash fiction really, and is pretty good fun without really having any great clout.

Rating: ***

Belly Full of Rain

Story: Belly Full of Rain

Author: Adam Marek

Collection: Instruction Manual for Swallowing

When Brendan accompanies Doris to her ultrasound scan he doesn't expect there to be multiple foetuses. To be fair, neither does Doris.

Parents, particularly those of newborn babies, should look away now.

'How many?' Brendan managed to ask.

'Too many for them all to make it, I'm sorry to say. The human body can rarely hold more than eight safely. You have at least thirty foetuses in there.'

Yep, you heard that right.

And what's more, Doris decides she wants to keep them all.

This is a splendidly macabre tale from what is shaping up to be a truly excellent collection.

Rating: ****

Sum

Story: Sum

Author: David Eagleman

Collection: Sum: Tales from the Afterlives

This little book became a massive word-of-mouth hit a few years back with everyone from Brian Eno to Stephen Fry raving about it. And it is a neat concept: a bunch of very short stories each set in a different version of the afterlife.

The first one is particularly good. In this take we relive our lives 'but this time with all the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together.'

So you spend seven months having sex, five months on the loo and so on. It does make you think and prompts a smile or two, even if I did agree with some of the suggestions. I mean, only two days lying compared to three days calculating restaurant tips? I ask you!

I read a few more stories from the book but found the cumulative effect a bit twee, although there was good stuff in there as well. One for dipping in and out of, perhaps during your five months on the toilet.

Rating: ****

Oystercatchers

Story: Oystercatchers

Author: Neil Campbell

Collection: Short Fiction Journal

A frustrating story, but only because I would have liked it to be longer. I was just getting into it when it ended.

A small number of paragraphs link together to tell the story of an affair between Tom and Susannah. Snatched moments in cars. Their workplace flirting. Conversations about leaving their families. Tom, alone, birdwatching, presumably afterwards.

Curiously effective.

Taken from the latest edition of Short Fiction Journal which also includes cracking stories from Richard Blandford and Charles Lambert.

Rating: ****

Victory Lap

Story: Victory Lap

Author: George Saunders

Collection: Tenth of December

It takes a brave writer to make the first story of a collection an incomprehensible load of old twaddle but when you are George Saunders and you have the critical world masturbating frantically at your every word you can probably get away with it.

Honestly, for the first few pages of this story I didn't have a clue what was going on. And not in a good way. As we approached the end something akin to a plot started to emerge: a young man arrives home, a home lorded over by his father (a man with lots of strange rules), he witnesses some sort of altercation across the road and steps in, armed with a large geode.

And that's it.

Clearly I have missed something here. Somewhere in the gobbledegook of a premable the author must have set something up which passed me by. I should really re-read the whole thing in an attempt to work it out but I was so fucking bored first time round I don't think I'll bother.

I have now read two stories from this collection, a collection receiving the highest praise from people who know much more about these things than I do, and I really cannot see what all the fuss is about. I will concede that this story has some excellent swearing in it, which is why it gets two stars instead of one.

UPDATE: Since reading this story I have tried to read another from this book, The Semplica Girl Diaries, which was recommended on Twitter by several people. It was trying too hard to be funny and failing miserably. I have therefore come to the conclusion that I am one of the few people who just don't 'get' Saunders. Oh well, plenty more stories on the shelves.

Rating: **

The Drought / Convalescence

Story: The Drought / Convalescence

Author: Jonathan Pinnock

Collection: Dot, Dash

Another pairing from this book of tiny stories (dots) followed by longer stories (dashes). It is a concept which makes it particularly enjoyable to dip in and out of and my copy is on my bedside pile for precisely that purpose.

The Drought is a love story in two sentences and is all the more moving for it.

Convalescence is a horror story that should really be made into a movie, preferably by one of those Korean directors. A man is recuperating from an operation but is haunted by visions which force the doctors to come clean about the radical new treatment they have subjected him to. Very creepy stuff.

Rating: ****

The Uprising

Story: The Uprising

Author: Brian Aldiss

Collection: 50 x 50: The Mini-Sagas

For several years, Brian Aldiss was the judge for the Daily Telegraph's fifty-word short story competition and during that time he'd often knock out some examples of his own. Fifty of the stories, plus a new introduction of precisely fifty words, are now collected in an ebook I have just published.

Here's one story from the book.

---

THE UPRISING

Marlene Dietrich, cool and lovely, playing a Russian princess, came down the wide palace steps to confront a mob.

Revolution had begun.

I must have been five when I saw that film.

Title? Forgotten.

What happened next? Not that ugly mob - only lovely Marlene is remembered.

Ah, one's first erection!

---

I am clearly biased but I think it is rather good.

Rating: ****

The 40-Litre Monkey

Story: The 40-Litre Monkey

Author: Adam Marek

Collection: Instruction Manual for Swallowing

A man pops into a pet shop off the Portobello Road and is greeted by a most peculiar shopkeeper who measures all his pets by volume. He offers to show the man his 40-litre monkey which he keeps upstairs.

And although that would be a hilarious euphemism, he really does have a large monkey upstairs.

Dark and hilarious, this one. Bodes well for the rest of the collection. Thanks to the wonderful Kat Stephen for giving it to me for Christmas.

Rating: ****

Sticks

Story: Sticks

Author: George Saunders

Collection: Tenth of December

It is probably a bit unfair of me to go straight to the shortest story in a collection but, in my defence, I didn't have a lot of time and wanted to at least dip in to this new book from Saunders as I know the high regard in which he is held. I've never quite got it myself - he's good but not that good - but I am prepared to be swayed.

This one didn't do it, though.

It's OK. A son reminisces about the metal poles his father fashioned into a cross on their front lawn. He'd decorate them depending on the time of year - a sheet over them for Halloween, a helmet and football shirt on Superbowl weekend, that sort of thing - and his designs became increasingly elaborate as he grew older. These were, however, his only moments of whimsy. He was otherwise a mean and uncharitable man.

Er, and that's it really. A neat idea, I grant you, but at shorter than two pages it is little more than a snapshot and fails to leave any lasting impression. Let's hope some of the other stories in the collection are better as it is all a bit emperor's new clothes at the moment.

Rating: ***

The Same Old Song of Plenty

Story: The Same Old Song of Plenty

Author: Matt Hutchinson

Collection: The Bohemyth

An old man takes a trip to visit the Statue of Liberty, something he has done several times in his life since arriving from Italy nearly fifty years previously. She had lured him here in the first place. She is to blame for everything that happened next.

A thoughtful, bittersweet tale that you can read for free at The Bohemyth online journal. And I suggest that you do as it is rather good.

Rating: ****

Friendly Fire

Story: Friendly Fire

Author: Tessa Hadley

Collection: Married Love

The quote from the Times on the front of this collection calls the stories 'Unexpected. Exhilarating. Life-enhancing.' which I find rather odd.

'Unexpected' implies that there is something surprising here, something out of the ordinary, but both stories I have read are pretty standard domestic dramas.

'Exhilarating'? I think not. They are honest, decent pieces of short fiction but nothing terribly exciting happens in them, nor are they exhilarating in or of themselves.

'Life-enhancing'? This one I may concede, although I wouldn't actually go that far myself. Hadley is good at capturing the everyday and it is conceivable that the Times reviewer might have felt that this could, in some way, inspire the reader to look at their own lives in a fresh way. But I am clutching at straws here.

Anyway, Friendly Fire is a tale of two cleaners working in a factory. One has a son on active service in Afghanistan. Her thoughts turn to him while she scrubs a toilet. That is pretty much it. A slice of life, well told.

Rating: ***

Crying Just Like Anybody

Story: Crying Just Like Anybody

Author: Richard Smyth

Collection: Crying Just Like Anybody: A Fiction Desk Anthology

America. New York, I think, just after the war. Anna's boyfriend, Johnny, has found a Martian. He fell from the sky and landed in the middle of the street. Johnny rescued him only to keep him cooped up. He charges people, bums mostly, to come and see him.

Anna tries to befriend the Martian, attempting to make sense of his weird language. She doesn't succeed but her actions set in motion a chain of events which reveal the mystery behind this odd little spaceman.

Maintaining the consistent standard of these Fiction Desk anthologies.

Rating: ****