JENNIFER HARVEY finds wondrous, imaginative melancholy in Cees Nooteboom’s short story collection The Foxes Come At Night: ‘Death is at the heart of this collection; it is the central idea upon which Nooteboom – as in so much of his writing – meditates. But it’s a philosophical focus that can put him at odds with some readers, and writers…’
MORGAN OMOTOYE finds much to admire in ‘Murderers’ by Leonard Michaels: ‘Michaels has skilfully succeeded in making us understand the narrator’s wanderlust, his craven desire for motion, velocity, escape from the spectre of death, but he has also made us feel slightly uneasy…’
KATE LUNN-PIGULA discovers the harsh reality of Kazuo Ishiguro’s short story collection, Nocturnes: ‘it isn’t shocking or political or sexy … It is gentle and mature: not the crazy anecdotes of up-and-coming rock stars, but dejected notes of people who haven’t fully realised their adolescent dreams. It’s a coming-of-(middle)-age collection concerned with life’s smaller anxieties…’
DAVID FRANKEL looks at Hubert Selby Jnr’s uncompromising story collection, Song of the Silent Snow: ‘Each of the stories offers a startling and vivid glimpse into the character’s life, the voices ranging from no-nonsense accounts of hard lives to poetic internal monologues…’
