Book news, reviews and recommendations
It’s rare for me to feel that I owe it to a writer to read their book but the anonymous North Korean author of The Accusation risked his life to get it published, and continues to do so. Bandi, which translates as firefly, still lives and works in North Korea. Should he be unmasked he […]
The Accusation by Bandi (transl. Deborah Smith): Please read this book Read More »
This collection is an unusual one: it was written for radio rather than print. The BBC commissioned Jon McGregor to write a set of stories that together comprise a prequel to the sublime Reservoir 13 which won the Costa Novel Award earlier this week, much to my delight. Unsurprisingly, given that was my book of
The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor: Podcast in print Read More »
Always a delight to open a new William Boyd and find it dedicated ‘To Susan’. Nothing to do with me, obviously, but still… Short stories are almost as welcome as a novel for me these days particularly when two of them are pleasingly lengthy. Boyd’s collection also includes seven much shorter stories but, perhaps inevitably
The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth by William Boyd: A satisfying snack Read More »
I have to confess that these are the first short stories I’ve read by Tove Jansson although I’ve very much enjoyed her novellas, given a new lease of lease of life by the lovely Sort of Books. I’ve harboured a fondness for them since their publicist sent me a copy of The Moomins and the
Letters from Klara by Tove Jansson (transl. Thomas Teal): Short stories to delight in Read More »
Hiromi Kawakami’s quietly charming tale of a young, slightly awkward woman and her eccentric colleagues, The Nakano Thrift Shop, was one of my books of last year. It’s written in the same understated style as the rather more melancholic Strange Weather in Tokyo, a style of which I’m particularly fond. Unsurprisingly, I was hoping for
It was impossible for me to read this collection without thinking of breach, Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes’ short stories about refugees living in Calais’ now disbanded Jungle. Whereas breach is based on Popoola and Holmes’ research carried out in and around Calais, The Refugees was written by an author who fled with his parents
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen: Listen up, Mr President Read More »
Rather like buses – you wait for ages then several come along in swift succession – my short story reviews seem be posted in clumps. A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Anna Noyes’ elegant Goodnight, Beautiful Women, attracted by the idea of a linked collection promised by the press release. It was its eye-catching
The Virginity of Famous Men by Christine Sneed: Short stories with humour and bite Read More »
Having got over my lifelong antipathy to short stories I still find myself drawn more to the linked variety rather than collections of standalones. There’s something about spotting a character familiar from a previous story and wondering how they might develop. Anna Noyes’ debut collection seemed like it might fit that category and although it
Goodnight, Beautiful Women by Anna Noyes: The human condition, elegantly sketched Read More »
breach is based on Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes’ exchanges with refugees who have lived in the camp known as the Jungle and the people of Calais where it’s based. Meike Ziervogel of Peirene Press commissioned the book to, in her words, ‘distil [their] stories into a work of fiction about escape, hope and aspiration.
I’m writing this review in March, long before the book’s publication date which is unusual for me but after being struck down by a particularly nasty bug leaving me with a head so stuffed full of cotton wool that I was unable to read for four days I needed a way back in. Short stories
The High Places by Fiona McFarlane: An inventive, disquieting collection Read More »
One of the best commercial novels I read last year was Laura Barnett’s The Versions of Us. It explores the idea that our lives are shaped by chance and random acts as much as by the choices we make, following three possible lives for a couple who meet when they’re nineteen. I loved the idea
Used to Be by Elizabeth Baines: More than One Way to Tell a Story Read More »