This is a blog about books and reading
A story that takes up philosophical questions about the nature of creation and the paradoxes inherent in a divine creator becomes a more straightforward SF tale in its final moments.
Byatt’s story, about a creative writing teacher and a promising older student, contains a submerged lesson about how to write worthwhile literature.
Porter’s suggestive and imagistic style lends her story an acute psychological insight.
This story, about a teenage girl sent to live with her grandmother during the final months of her pregnancy, is about a struggle between conflicting notions contained in the title.
From the woman who many consider to be Brazil’s greatest writer, a story about the family party from hell.
Seghers’s story, about the conditions necessary for an unhappy man to become radicalized, holds pressing lessons for our current historical moment.
Like Alice Munro, MacLeod has the ability to build whole lives in a compressed space and to subtly shift a story’s focus and meaning without apparent effort.
Wharton’s story is an examination of the vacuity that attaches to the wealthiest strata of society and one man’s unsuccessful attempt to climb the social ladder.
Set in a mythical Depression-era New York City, the story centres on a bookie who becomes an unwitting father figure to a young girl who is offered as a marker on a bet.
Barker’s psychologically tense story examines the price we pay for confronting our darkest fears.