Festive Story: Alison MacLeod’s ‘There Are Precious Things’
In a special Christmas post, we are delighted to bring you ALISON MACLEOD’s festive short story ‘There are Precious Things’:
The Family Dynamic
J.L . BOGENSCHNEIDER looks at domestic secrets and lies in stories by Heinrich Böll and Julio Cortázar : ‘Here then, are two families faced with the same problem: a fragile individual who must be protected from the truth at all costs…’
Eisenheim the Illusionist: Symbolic Threats and Literal Perils
SHORT STORY ADAPTATIONS: this month, Dr. CHRIS MACHELL looks at the limitations of film in the adaptation of Steven Millhauser’s Eisenheim the Illusionist: ‘Working in the ‘dark realm of transgressions’, Millhauser’s Eisenheim undermines the distinction between reality and illusion…’
Short Story Masterclass with… Jon McGregor
PODCAST: In the second instalment of this year’s Short Story Masterclass podcasts, Jac Cattaneo talks with multi award-winning author, Jon McGregor, about the loss of innocence, the dangers of complacency, playing with short story form, and visions of the apocalypse in his short story collection, ‘This Isn’t the Sort of Things That Happens to Someone Like You’…
Seasonal Writing, Themes of Isolation
STORY DISCUSSION: Author MARY O’DONNELL discusses the changing themes in seasonal stories:’The difference between the then of O. Henry, and the now of contemporary writers, is that we write in a highly nuanced moral atmosphere, so nuanced that the building of ‘uplifting’ lessons into our stories is often avoided…’
The Darkness Within, The Darkness Without
TEIKA BELLAMY explores the concept of otherness in Cassandra Parkin’s fairy tales: ‘Throughout my childhood and a large part of my early adult life I didn’t like my name. It was so obviously foreign, ‘other’, and as most children and young adults come to understand, being different is not desirable.’
Not About Nightingales
LOUISE MURRAY explores Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales: ‘Look beneath the surface and simplicity of the narrative, and the reader will find concealed there a deep complexity which complements the ornateness of prose – a complexity of morality, of feeling and of soul.’
The Fractured City in The Third Man
SHORT STORY ADAPTATIONS: this month, Dr. CHRIS MACHELL looks at the film adaptation of Graham Greene’s short story ‘The Third Man’: ‘It’s certainly rare for authors to capitulate to the changes made to their adaptations, much less admit that those changes improved on the original work.’
Grist: The Men in H.E. Bates’ ‘The Mill’
MIKE SMITH examines the role of men in H.E. Bates’ short story ‘The Mill’: ‘With such stories it is easy to focus exclusively on what we might call ‘the victim,’ and on the outcome, but it’s worth also looking at members of the ‘supporting cast’ whose lives, behaviours and attitudes enable and create the events in which the protagonist is enmeshed…’
Citizen: The New Story Festival
KAY GILMORE reports on this year’s CITIZEN: THE NEW STORY event where a range of writers attempt to adress the questions ‘who are we?’ and ‘where do we belong?’