Newest Short Stories Reviews
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
First things first. There's only one story in this collection about Cold Comfort Farm. This is a story about the farm before Flora Poste arrives, a 'prequel' if you like. It features the Starkadder family at Christmas, with a dispute over a coffin-nail and it did make me smile. I suspect it is one for fans, however. For instance, the appearance of a teenage Dick Hawk-Monitor, already in love with Elfine, shoots a knowing wink at the devoted but would leave most readers cold. Full review...
War: Stories of Conflict by Michael Morpurgo
Throughout history, war has blighted society and had long lasting impacts on not only those directly involved but the innocent bystanders too. This collection of stories, edited by the magnificent Michael Morpurgo himself, looks to explore the impacts of war on individual soldiers, families and especially children. Every story approaches conflicts from a different angle and this ensures that even though there are a good number of short stories in the book, you will never feel as if it is becoming repetitive or dull. The stories do a good job of conveying just how multi-faceted and complex the concept of war is. Full review...
The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman
It all begins with a bank robbery. Only this isn't your typical sort of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person in the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value that they have with them. These range from photographs and a key through to a calculator...and on taking these items he says he is also taking fifty percent of their souls, and it is up to the victims to find the way to get their souls back, or to die trying. Full review...
The Gloomster by Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson
We've all been there. Finding fault with everything around us, and perhaps picking on one particular irritant that gets us so rattled, tetchy and narked all we can do is invoke "Hell and damnation!" down on all creation - including, of course, ourselves. After all, our lot is so bad it won't make anything much worse. Full review...
The Man in the Shed by Lloyd Jones
The title is certainly attention-grabbing and I hoped that the book would live up to my expectations. It did. The man in 'The Man in the Shed' is not blessed with a name. His name (whatever it is) is not important or relevant to the tale. It's all about why he's in the shed in the first place. This particular shed's in a garden of a house inhabited by a family which includes the young narrator. It's pretty clear that the marriage is going through a rocky patch right now. So who, you could reasonably wonder, is the odd one out here - the husband or the man in the shed. Jones tells us in his own way. He's a writer who catches your attention early, or he did in my case. No fancy statements or lazy cliches but good old plain English but with flair. Full review...
Alice by Judith Hermann
Alice is a collection of five short stories, linked thematically since they all deal with the subject of death, but they are also linked because the central character, Alice, is the same in each story. So rather than feeling like short stories the book has a hint of the novel to it, yet the stories are never completed or fully told so it's a novel where you're not always sure what's going on. Full review...
The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad
"In the tangle of crumbling, weather-beaten and broken hills, where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, is a military outpost…" Thus begins the tale of Tor Baz, the Black Falcon. To this desolate place come two wanderers, a man and a woman seeking refuge.
Refuge is denied them, since it places duties that the fort commander cannot accept, but instead he offers them shelter from the wind of a hundred and twenty days. For as long as they want it. Shelter, and food. Full review...
The Foxes Come At Night And Other Stories by Cees Nooteboom and Ina Rilke (Translator)
There's a bold statement on the front cover from, as it happens, one of my favourite authors, A S Byatt saying that Nooteboom is one of the greatest modern novelists so I thought that I was in for a treat. But I didn't enjoy the first short story. Not the greatest of starts. I was disappointed to say the least and was wondering what all the fuss was about. Then I started to read the story entitled Thunderstorm and things started to pick up. I appreciated the sparse and elegant language. Lines such as 'Five people at an outdoor cafe: two women ... a solitary black man ... a couple at a table nearby. Enough for a film.' How lovely and evocative is that last line, I'm thinking. I read it twice as it was so good. Full review...
Last Fling by Sue Gee
Sue Gee is well known for her novels, but this is her first collection of short stories. Short story collections are not for everyone. I've always enjoyed them since they fit easily into a busy life, leaving you feeling as if you've lived through a whole story in just a short space of time. It's easier to find the time for a quick story sometimes than to sit down with a four hundred page novel! Full review...
In-Flight Entertainment by Helen Simpson
I am always thrilled to see that Helen Simpson has brought out a new book. I am a big fan of her crisp, funny, observant short stories. So I picked up 'In Flight Entertainment' with some anticipation. I was not disappointed. Full review...
Toby's Little Eden by John E Flannery
John E Flannery's debut collection contains four short stories (although one is more of a novella) and a series of amusing sketches about the ground staff at a new Golf Course in north Manchester. They're more varied than they might appear at first glance and demonstrate Flannery's ability to get straight to the heart of the story without wasting words and to develop character as economically as possible, whilst still holding the reader's imagination. I knew as soon as I began The Ghostwriter that I wasn't going to be disappointed as a man who has written successful thrillers is possessed by the spirit of Charles Dickens. It's a neat riff on John Braine's idea that novelist wait for an idea to descend on them and Graham Greene's belief that novelists are like mediums. Full review...
The Sexes by Dorothy Parker
From the young woman who examined her handkerchief in minute detail, to the soldier's leave which didn't live up to expectation, through the thoughts of the early hours of the morning to the actress who proved a disappointment to her fan and on to the glorious culmination of the child who should never have been called Lolita we have five wonderful short stories. They're in a book that's no bigger than most short stories but buy it and it could well be the best buy that you make this year. Full review...
The Kissing Game by Aidan Chambers
You don't see that many short story collections in YA circles. But when they do appear, you often wonder why there aren't more of them. And this is absolutely the case with The Kissing Game. Ranging from short pieces of flash fiction to "proper" short stories, each one will incite, surprise and stimulate. Full review...
The Suicide Run by William Styron
A WW2 naval soldier, guarding a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartials, is forced to wonder if he is winning his own battles against those arriving and leaving. A soldier remembers calming memories, and those causing tension, as he rests up before action. And for a highly-charged young man, there may be too much risk to be found in his high-octane downtime. Full review...
The Vernham Chronicles by John Saunders
Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale is the little village of Vernham. Anyone who lives in a village will recognise it immediately, with its cobbled streets and Tudor buildings. There was some damage during the war (which might, or might not have been down to a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps have been filled with some beautiful, er, mock Tudor buildings. Almost unique and nearly beautiful as the village is, it's not the star of The Vernham Chronicles. The stars are the people who live in Vernham. Full review...
The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes by John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris Coady
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful detective character will have far too many cases in his career for it to be at all realistic. The worst case in point are the Hardy Boys, who have had two hundred or more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literary, but no less busy it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed many times that he did not write down all that man's exploits. Tony Reynolds here gives us eight more cases, making Holmes' workload even more impressive. Full review...
Perfect Lives by Polly Samson
The eleven short stories in Perfect Lives are about a group of people living in an English seaside town. Each story of challenged relationships, devastating discoveries and objects and people with a history is carefully and beautifully crafted, stands alone and works well in its own right, but the connections between all the stories offer an extra, fascinating dimension. Each story made me want to look at the others again to understand how they all connect, to piece together the different bits of people's lives in each story. This format also offers an opportunity to see some of the characters from several different perspectives, and perhaps make the short stories more satisfying to those who are dissatisfied by their brevity, as some of the same characters reappear, so offering some of the advantages of the novel while staying in the short story form. There are four stories told in the first person by an unnamed woman who is married with two young sons, and then one of her sons has a story of his own (Ivan Knows). There are a variety of narrative viewpoints – women, men, a little boy, a teenage girl, first and third person. Full review...
The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories by Shena Mackay
This volume of short stories, first published in 2008 but new in paperback, has a lot to offer those familiar with Shena Mackay's previous work and readers coming to her stories for the first time, with a generous thirty six stories - thirteen recent stories collected in book form for the first time are combined with twenty three from Shena Mackay's previous collections. Full review...
A Season to Remember by Sheila O'Flanagan
We first meet the Lodge owners, a likable couple. They find running their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date so O'Flanagan gets in the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early on. As the festive season looms, the unthinkable has happened. Empty rooms. They're not used to empty rooms, at any time of the year. Normally the Lodge is a full house. But then a slow and steady trickle starts as our characters book in - and the story starts proper, so to speak. Full review...
Rumpole at Christmas by John Mortimer
This book is as slim as one of Rumpole's beloved packets of cigars and it can also be read in the time it takes an average turkey to cook in the oven on Christmas Day. A handful of festive, short stories is covered in this book with its appealing front cover. Most of the stories have been previously published elsewhere, mainly in 'The Strand Magazine' but also in some of the national newspapers. Full review...
Beginners by Raymond Carver
One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholic. Carver's characters tend to drink excessively, and his stories often examine the negative impact of drinking on his central character's relationships. But nowadays, what we talk about when we talk about Carver is the role of his editor, Gordon Lish. Full review...
The Empty Family by Colm Toibin
In his first book since the pitch-perfect Brooklyn, Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme of exile and homecoming in his new collection of short stories, 'The Empty Family'. As the title suggests, many of the stories also revolve around family relationships, and their sweet and sour Nature. Full review...
Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut died a couple of years ago after a sci fi writing career spanning over fifty years; he was well-known for his humanist views. This collection of unpublished short stories shows Vonnegut at his dark best, his theme, individuals out for themselves in an uncaring society. A colleague at The Bookbag recently wrote that Kurt Vonnegut's early writing is his strongest. If that is so, then this collection, illustrated with cartoons by the author, will be good news for his many fans. Full review...
The Beautiful and the Grotesque by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
The author, the tongue-twisting Akutagawa is 'hailed as one of the greatest short story writers in world literature' says the back book cover. I was truly impressed and very keen to get reading. The front cover is both eye-catching and colourful, there's no doubt that this book is about Japan. There is a comprehensive Introduction with its lovely title A Sprig Of Wild Orange written by the translator. And straight away I got a strong sense of his enthusiasm for the short stories to follow. It is a good lead-in as it informs the reader of the gulf which exists between Western and Japanese values (a gulf as big as it gets, apparently) and of the conservative nature of the Japanese people. Full review...
The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
As you might expect with short stories, the themes are as varied as 'The Fears of Mrs Orlando' to 'Mothers' and of course, I have my own particular favourites. Most of these short stories cover a couple of pages, but others are merely a sentence or two. And, for me, the less on the page, the more impart the words usually have. In short (no pun intended) there would seem to be something for everyone in these 700+ pages. Full review...
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
It goes without saying, but the greatest thing about fantasy fiction is that one can go anywhere with it, and do anything. So a young man can easily try and dig his girlfriend up and retrieve some poetry he romantically left with her - only to have a hairy evening as a result. There can be a psychic link between a young lad, called Onion and doomed to die in a terrorist attack, and his cousin while she works as slave in an odd community of wizards. Several worlds can be accessed through an elderly woman's handbag, for better or worse. Full review...
What Becomes by A L Kennedy
You're three stories into this collection and two people have cut their hands open preparing food - a man with love drooping away from his marriage, making soup, and another, a greengrocer, preparing stock and thinking about his own relationship. But there is no pattern to that. Four stories in and there have been two bursts of non-sequitur comedy. Why your fruit might be ruined by stray fingers, and the thoughts of a woman in a flotation tank, remembering Doctor Who, locked parental doors - and the urban myths of gerbils. But there's still no pattern - and that's the point of these combined stories. Life and all of its emotions does not live to rule. Full review...
Travelling Light by Tove Jansson
In her home country of Finland – and no doubt throughout much of the rest of Europe which is not quite so sniffy about foreign literature as Britain tends to be – Jansson is generally recognised as an author of talent, skill, verve and wit that extended far beyond the Moomin Troll stories for which she is best known in this country. Those children's books were first published in England sixty years ago and have remained in print ever since (as well as being adapted for just about every other medium going), and a joy they are too, but it is only recently that we have been granted the pleasures of reading her fiction for adults. Full review...
Ford County by John Grisham
When I think of John Grisham I tend to think firstly of lawyers. Well, actually, I think of Tom Cruise first to be honest, and then the whole lawyer thing. I expect surprising twists and long, detailed plots. This collection, however, is a book of short stories so has to work differently. There isn't room within a short story for a lengthy, twisting plot, and so Grisham has to rely on other skills to make them work. My feeling was that some do and some don't. Set in America's Deep South all the stories revolve around a rather mixed bag of characters from Ford County, with the ever-present lawyers but also gamblers, murderers, con artists, drunks and scoundrels. Full review...
A Darker Shade of Blue by John Harvey
There are eighteen short stories covering the East Midlands, those parts of London you'd generally really rather avoid and rural East Anglia. You'll see broken families, revenge killings, prostitution and drugs. There's corruption – not unusual when you have an overstretched police force and underpaid men and women staffing it. And then there are the people who, in spite of everything, fight for justice. Full review...
Tales of Freedom by Ben Okri
Tales of Freedom is a book of two halves, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up the majority of the book. Comic Destiny is made up of a series of short pieces that follow on from each other and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything else. Full review...
Love Me Tender by Jane Feaver
A woman remembers her dead husband playing Love Me Tender (the song made famous by Elvis Presley) on his tenor horn. She is in a daze, feeling the grief of the bereaved widow she is, the betrayal of the deceived wife, and the guilt of having murdered him. The title story of this collection is all the more moving and startling because of its understated style, and what is not said as well as what is. Full review...
Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
Between the Assassinations is a collection of short stories set in the fictional South Indian town of Kittur, which is almost certainly Mangalore (where the Adiga grew up). But the plight of the residents can be found in any Indian city - which I imagine is Adiga's point of setting it in a fictional location. The twelve stories are vaguely interlinked (there are some recurring characters) but for the most part the stories stand alone. The time period is set between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, although like the location, the time period and the assassinations of the title have little bearing on the events themselves. Full review...
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'. Full review...
It's Beginning To Hurt by James Lasdun
It's Beginning to Hurt is a collection of sixteen short stories, all bound together by the theme of hurt in various forms. It is James Lasdun's third collection of short stories and, chances are, if you are a fan of the short story then you will have read something by him before. Full review...
The Theory of Light and Matter by Andrew Porter
Both the book cover and its title are enticing, quirky, eye-catching. Personally, I'm a fan of most things American including American fiction, so I couldn't wait to start reading. I was not disappointed. Porter introduces us to characters, many of whom would probably be described as deeply flawed. He shares the darker side of modern-day American life with the reader - which is far from the bright lights of glitzy New York or the sun-drenched beaches of California. You could say that this is all about real life. To underline his point, Porter's characters are mostly local folks (to use a favourite American word) shuffling through life as best they can. Full review...
If it is Your Life by James Kelman
If This Is Your Life is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writing. Kelman doesn't really do 'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story that gives its title to this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about people on the edge of society. He addresses issues such as class, politics, gender, age and ill health. Full review...
Zombie: An Anthology of the Undead by Christopher Golden (Editor)
Anyone who enjoys a good horror story and likes zombie films will love this book, which is a collection of nineteen short stories by a variety of authors. I have to admit that I have only heard of one of the authors before - Mike Carey, who writes the Felix Castor novels - but I am not an avid reader of the genre and don't doubt that the authors will be known to readers more familiar with it. Despite this unfamiliarity, I thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories, with just one or two seemingly not up to scratch. Full review...
Loves Me, Loves Me Not by Katie Fforde (Editor) and Sue Moorcroft (Editor)
What a feast is presented in these forty stories from well-loved and prolific romantic authors, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Romantic Novelists' Association. In a Who's Who of the genre, there are writers from every age group, including one or two who might even have been founder members of the RNA, back in 1960. My advice is to sip through the stories slowly, rather than gobbling them up quickly and suffering from indigestion. Full review...
Cut on the Bias by Stephanie Tillotson
If Cut on the Bias is in your local bookshop, you will surely be won over by the feisty cover. Stories about women and their clothes are about identity, so what better start to a set of short stories than a fashion statement cover featuring the bags in which said clothes arrive home? Full review...
