Short story month 2024: Returning characters and recycled themes mark an intermittently interesting new collection from Stephen King
The biggest disappointment in this book is its relative lack of creepiness.
Short story month 2024: Alice Munro, Nobel Prize winner and giant of the short story, dies at 92
One need only read a few sentences of Munro's writing to understand that one is in the presence of literary genius.
31 Days of Stories 2023, Day 29: “Clytie” by Eudora Welty
If Welty begins her tale as a moody Gothic throwback, by the conclusion she has injected a large dollop of ridiculousness.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 30: “The Alps” by Colin Barrett
Canadian-Irish writer Colin Barrett is a wizard with language that sings with the rhythms and cadences of the working class.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 1: “The Dead Are More Visible” by Steven Heighton
One of the author’s best, this story interrogates the notion of societal visibility through the prism of a middle-aged-woman working as a labourer flooding ice rinks in the middle of the night.
Aimee Wall’s debut novel recalls a 1960s underground movement in a story told through precise, exuberant language
The brief novel’s propulsion and effect result from its author’s key understanding of just how far to push her technique to achieve maximum effect.
31 Days of Stories 2021: Why read short stories?
Stories require attention and concentration and often yield their meanings only over time, or in retrospect. But the best stories reward vigilance and repeated reading.
31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 1: “The Finkelstein 5” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's story is a satire about the cascading violence that results from institutional racism.
31 Days of Stories 2020: Why stories?
Short stories offer a different kind of pleasure from other forms of literature, a pleasure not curtailed by a story's relatively small size.