Book review – short stories
The young Anton Chekhov searches for his voice
In Chekhov’s first stories, rooted in the provincial Russia of the early 1880s, we see various plots and characters take shape that will emerge fully formed in later works
A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed
‘The cogs are seizing up, the lights are going out.’ As Elizabeth Costello clears her desk in this collection of stories, we feel that Coetzee may be doing the same
Love and loneliness prevail in the latest short stories
Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection Her Body & Other Parties (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99) takes a confident straddle across speculative fiction,…
The more outrageous sf fantasies give way to soft dystopias
Science fiction, as any enthusiast will tell you, is not just about gazing into the future but also about illuminating…
The elegiac and the exuberant
Discussions about the short story too often fall into a false dichotomy that can be characterised, in essence, by a…
A topsy-turvy world
‘A crane fell on top of me in Kladno in 1952, after which my writing got better,’ Bohumil Hrabal (who…
The best short story collections — from childish gabbling to jaded nihilism
Anyone who enjoyed Ali Smith’s novel How to be Both, with its charmingly loopy monologue of an Italian Renaissance painter…
The best British short stories — from Daniel Defoe to Zadie Smith
In this handsome two-volume anthology, Philip Hensher convincingly establishes himself as a world authority on the short story, says Ian Sansom
Short and surreal
‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…
Dark and stormy tales
Margaret Atwood is in the first rank of literary fame and her trophy cabinet is handsomely stocked; yet she has…
Extra-ordinary
A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories. In each of these mini fictions,…
