Five Linked Short Story Collections I’ve Read

I’m a big fan of linked short stories. Some can almost read like novels and are often marketed as such, I suspect because short stories can be a hard sell. Below are five collections whose stories share a location, all with links to my reviews.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s exquisite, Roman Stories, has at its centre a suite of pieces featuring characters who live close to a set of steps. Written in elegant, precise language, Lahiri’s stories are suffused with a quiet empathy for characters living far away from their family or at the middle of a life marked by loss or discontent. The experience of well-heeled professionals contrasts with economic and political migrants, often homesick and struggling to pay the rent. It’s a gorgeous collection which marches the extraordinarily high bar set by her novella, Whereabouts.

Paul McVeigh’s I Hear You has a similar structure, comprising three standalone stories plus The Circus, ten pieces all featuring participants in the talent show put on by the titular club’s new owner. The £10,000 prize has focused the minds of all manner of performers – from the impressionist who’s incapable of being himself to the magician’s assistant who sees a chance for revenge on her coercive partner to the medium convinced he has a direct line to God, and happy to charge believers £99 to access it. There’s no room for fancy literary footwork but McVeigh conveys a great deal in these brief stories, all commissioned by the BBC to fill a fifteen-minute radio slot.

Spanning several periods, Neil Bartlett’s Address Book is set at seven different London addresses, all of which have some significance in the author’s life, all sharing themes of home, belonging and love. Bartlett neatly bookends his collection, opening with the celebration of a glorious memory, vividly capturing all the nervous hope, expectation and awkwardness of youth, and closing with a portrayal of a widower’s wrenching grief. His stories are written with a thoughtful compassion and tenderness, and his characters affectionately portrayed.

Sidik Fofana’s meticulously constructed Stories From the Tenants Downstairs revolves around the tenants of a rundown Harlem apartment block, each of whom is given their own distinctive voice, often in a vernacular which sings out from the page so that you can almost hear it. For all of them, the urgency of making enough money to get by is a constant, made all the more so by the eviction notices served by a company intent on making a hefty profit from the sale of apartments some have lived in all their lives. An impressive collection, so confident and assured it’s hard to credit that it’s Fofana’s first.

The location of Cathy Thomas’s Islanders is very different. Comprising twelve stories set on Guernsey over two decades beginning in 2000, it follows a group of young people for whom ‘the rock’ is both home and a place to escape. It’s the perfect setting for a set of linked stories. Part of its appeal is spotting familiar characters as they cross each other’s paths over decades: some friends, others trying to turn their backs on a difficult past, all knowing far more about each other than is often comfortable. Thomas has a sharp observational eye backed up by a pithy wit and a compassionate understanding.

Any linked short story collections you’d like to suggest?

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