Story reviews
Short collection reviews
McSweeney's 30
by Dave Eggers (ed.)
For anyone not acquainted with the weird and and crazily wonderful world of Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s publications, issue 30 might be a good (ie not too zany) place to start.
Country of the Grand
by Gerard Donovan
‘How many people get to hear what their friends think about them?’ Gerard Donovan asked an audience at the 2008 Edinburgh international book festival.
The Pleasant Light of Day
by Philip Ó Ceallaigh
If the title of Philip Ó Ceallaigh’s first book didn’t make you grab it off the shelf, the reviews should have.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
by Daniyal Mueenuddin
In this beautiful and assured collection, Daniyal Mueenuddin works and reworks the eternal themes of life, love and death. His control never wavers – neither does his compassion.
The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories
by Shena Mackay
This is a wonderfully bittersweet selection of works by one of the modern masters of the short story.
Caravan Thieves
by Gerard Woodward
Gerard Woodward’s memorable first collection of stories gives us his own peculiar fictional world, in which the surreal makes its incursions into everyday lives.
It's Beginning to Hurt
by James Lasdun
There’s something disarmingly low-key about James Lasdun’s writing, a hard-to-define tone that nevertheless draws the reader deep into the specific moment of each story.
Knockemstiff
by Donald Ray Pollock
If books came with sound effects, this debut collection would rattle like a plastic bottle of pills every time you turned a page, such are the many and varied references to experience-enhancing or -deadening pharmaceuticals.
Picador Shots 2008
by Various
Eight more pocket-sized Picador Shots are now available for your delight.
The Dream Lover
by William Boyd
‘Fiction, for me, is all about liberating my imagination,’ writes William Boyd in his introduction to The Dream Lover, ‘and that liberation seems to function particularly appealingly in the short-story form.’
Lust, Caution
by Eileen Chang
Expanding their Modern Classics series, Penguin has now published two collections of novellas and short stories by the celebrated Chinese writer Eileen Chang, containing several perfectly-formed examples of her writing about 30s and 40s Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Dark Roots
by Cate Kennedy
Kennedy’s sparkling debut collection is characterised by the sheer confidence of her writing and her knack of actually being able to tell a good tale.
No One Belongs Here More Than You
by Miranda July
Miranda July’s debut collection is an engaging mix of the heartfelt and self-aware, with some very funny moments and some sharp observations.
Dark Paradise
by Rosa Liksom (translated from the Finnish by David McDuff)
Sophie Lewis is shocked, and then awed, by a collection of grim, unpredictable stories.
The Loudest Sound and Nothing
by Clare Wigfall
Peter Hobbs, author of I Could Ride All Day in My Cool Blue Train, is impressed by a "masterful debut collection".
The Separate Heart and Other Stories
by Simon Robson
Robson’s stories offer up the notion that separateness exists between adults, and between children and the adult world, no matter how well one may seem to know the other. They are also very, very English.
St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
by Karen Russell
Karen Russell’s debut collection of stories is an exuberant and imaginative journey into places that seem fantastic, yet could be true.
Last Night: Stories
by James Salter
In some ways the ten disturbing, compelling stories in Last Night are old-fashioned; men are manly, women are beautiful, and each one comes with a killer twist. Yet the stories’ central themes – betrayal and the way it almost carelessly destroys the golden lives of the seemingly contented – are universal and timeless.
Sunstroke
by Tessa Hadley
This is a deftly assembled collection of short stories about the everyday flow of human lives, and unexpected moments that can shift those lives off (or back on) course.
The Turning
by Tim Winton
Parched, arid and dusty lives, mirrored in the unremittingly harsh landscape of Australia, have become the stock-in-trade of Tim Winton.
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (including In Persuasion Nation)
by George Saunders
The skewed world of George Saunders is a strangely wonderful place, an alternative but frighteningly feasible universe in which advertising and wonky syntax have smothered the life out of normal discourse and free will.
How to Breathe Underwater
by Julie Orringer
'Outstanding'; 'unbelievably good'; 'pitch perfect'; 'clear, cool and enticing'; 'subtle and multi-layered': these are just some of the justified reactions to Julie Orringer's first collection of short stories.
People I Wanted To Be
by Gina Ochsner
Ochsner's stories of love, loss, death and redemption were inspired by her travels around Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic.
The Secret Goldfish
by David Means
It is a truism that the best modern short stories are written by Americans (and you can take that to mean the United States or North America – or you can disagree completely).
Gallatin Canyon
by Thomas McGuane
Thomas McGuane is a very funny writer, but the almost desperate humour in his stories is leavened by a sense of deep loneliness.
Pieces for the Left Hand
by J Robert Lennon
After the frenzied intensity of his last book (Mailman), Lennon presents us with one hundred very short, beautifully crafted vignettes that aptly capture the oddness of everyday life.
Dead Girls
by Nancy Lee
Longer isn't necessarily better, as this debut collection of short stories vividly demonstrates.
Black Juice
by Margo Lanagan
Lanagan's spare sentences and arresting metaphors conjure up tales of worlds similar but subtly different to our own, often set in unspecified pasts and futures.
The Nimrod Flip-Out
by Etgar Keret
The deceptive simplicity of these often funny and oddly moving short – in some cases very short – stories reveals Keret to be a lively wit and an exuberant satirist.
Little Infamies
by Panos Karnezis
These interlinked short stories about life in an unnamed rural Greek village are beautifully written with a light and almost magical touch that suits both the comic and the tragic themes of the book.
I Could Ride All Day in My Cool Blue Train
by Peter Hobbs
Hobbs's first book, the novel The Short Day Dying, was well received by critics; his second, this collection of short stories, deserves equal praise for the confidence of its writing and the range of its subject matter.
The Hill Road
by Patrick O'Keeffe
Bitter sadness, violence and regret bubble to the surface of rural Ireland in this prize-winning volume of novellas set in the fictional townland of Kilroan.
The Dead Fish Museum
by Charles D'Ambrosio
It is a bizarre and frankly baffling fact that this mind-blowing collection of stories has not found a publisher in the UK.
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