Short stories
His latest disturbing short stories show Richard Ford very much on song
Sorry For Your Trouble (Bloomsbury, £16.99), Richard Ford’s 13th book of fiction, shows a writer still very much on song.…
The Literary Disco podcast made me want to throw my laptop at the wall
One of the stranger things that happened in the period just before lockdown was the sudden disappearance of audiences from…
Short stories to enjoy in lockdown
In these circumstances there’s a temptation to reach for the longest novel imaginable. If you’re not going to read Proust…
Ill-disciplined and self-indulgent: The Guilty Feminist podcast reviewed
With theatres shut, radio must lighten the darkness. The Guilty Feminist is a wildly popular podcast performed by Deborah Frances-White…
The good sex award goes to Sarah Hall: Sudden Traveller reviewed
Sarah Hall should probably stop publishing short stories for a while to give other writers a chance. If she’s not…
Kristen Roupenian’s debut short stories fulfil all expectations
Kristen Roupenian’s debut collection, You Know You Want This (Cape, £12.99), comes hotly anticipated. Her short story, ‘Cat Person’, went…
The man who never cried
It was odd listening to Jim Al-Khalili being interviewed on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning rather than the other way…
The end of the world is nigh: the latest short stories reviewed
Only Helen DeWitt would start a book with an epigraph of her own pop-culture mash-up poetry and end with an…
Too much American angst: the latest short stories reviewed
In ‘A Prize for Every Player’ — one of 12 stories in Days of Awe, a new collection by A.M.…
David Sedaris, the current king of humorists, is often not funny at all
Since the 17th century, a ‘humourist’ has been a witty person, and especially someone skilled in literary comedy. In 1871,…
A love letter to the short story
On a recent Guardian podcast, Chris Power — who has written a short story column in the Guardian for a…
American Histories, by John Edgar Wideman, reviewed
This new collection of John Edgar Wideman’s short stories comes across the pond as one of four handsomely packaged volumes…
The wilder shores of excess in William Trevor’s fiction
A very prolific and long-standing writer of short stories reveals himself. William Trevor, who died in 2016, owned up to…
Denis Johnson: where pain and comedy collide
The death of Denis Johnson last May marked the loss of a great original who catalogued the lives of junkies,…
The rich literature of the game of poker
According to the subtitle, this is a collection of ‘short stories of long nights at the poker table’. Were that…
A choice of short stories
It can’t be easy to switch between editing others people’s fiction and writing your own: how do you suspend that…
The blind boy who learnt to see with sound
The deadline for Radio 2’s 500 Words competition falls next Thursday. Children between the ages of five and 13 are…
Time is of the essence in Helen Simpson’s Cockfosters
Helen Simpson is not a prolific writer; six slim collections of short stories in 25 years, each timed quinquennially with…
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and other characters to make you cry with laughter
Coup de Foudre has a line from Antony and Cleopatra as its epigraph: ‘Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.’ In…
Fathers and sons — seen from multiple angles
‘People talk about their childhood and it’s so mundane. I don’t remember much about it, if I’m honest. I can’t…
The secret life of the short story
The short story likes to play the underdog. Famously unfavoured by publishers, it has none of the commercial clout of…
The short story in Britain today: enough to make Conan Doyle weep
Philip Hensher bewails the current neglect of the short story, especially in the British literary press
Stories about storytelling: Kirsty Gunn’s preoccupation with words is utterly entrancing
Although entitled Infidelities this collection of short stories could as well be called Choices, because that is what really preoccupies…
The problem when novelists write short stories
Rose Tremain walks on water. Her historical novels are absolutely marvellous, brilliantly plotted, witty and wise, with some of the…
Hilary Mantel’s fantasy about killing Thatcher is funny. Honest
Heaven knows what the millions of purchasers of the Man Booker-winning Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies will make…
