Tag: Short Stories

  • The Woman Dies

    The Woman Dies

    by Aoko Matsuda Europa Editions, Paperback, £14.99 What I love about short stories is that they can lightly slip into the crack of everyday hectic-ness. One day, Aoko Matsuda, the author of Where the Wild Ladies Are — witty, uncanny, feminist tales rewriting Japanese folklore, winner of the 2021 World Fantasy Award Best Collection —…

  • The American Lover, by Rose Tremain

    Paperback £8.99, Vintage, out now I don’t often feel like reading short stories, but this collection by one of my favourite novelists makes for a swift and pleasurable read. The stories are diverse but this manages not to jar, which is especially impressive given their variety. Tolstoy is dying in a Russian stationmaster’s house –…

  • In-flight Entertainment: Helen Simpson

    London’s Helen Simpson is one of our best living writers of short stories and this, her fifth collection, is another tour de force that you’ll end up pressing on everyone you know. Underpinned by a burning anxiety about the looming threat of climate change, the stories in In-Flight Entertainment do more in a few pages…

  • Acid House: Irvine Welsh

    A disgusting, vile and vivid collection of short stories riddled with sex, drugs and insects, plus smatterings ofAmsterdamand Stoke Newington.  Very grubby, very Nineties, and very brilliant.

  • Cathedral: Raymond Carver

    The magic and mastery of Carver’s short story writing is nothing short of breathtaking.  Let yourself be swept away into the lives of ordinary folk facing bleak truths, disappointments and small revelations.  Be sure of a sharp jolt ending then spend the rest of the day just thinking.  You will not regret it.