G. F. PHILLIPS examines the creative and destructive elements of class, gender, work and home in Lawrence’s ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’: ‘an embedded narrative, ever-present, impinges on the lives of Lawrence’s industrial workers, so that the domestic squabbles are nearly always about work-related problems…’
ALEX MAIR finds the upheavals of the Edwardian era reflected in the short stories of Saki: ‘To dip into a Munro story is to step across the threshold of good taste, and enter into a darkly satirical universe; one filled with strange beasts, terrifying aunts, blood-thirsty animals, talking hens and angry, unyielding, god-like weasels.’
MARCELLA O’CONNOR shows us that Bowen’s ‘The New House’ isn’t as straightforward as it first appears: ‘a closer reading reveals that it is actually a radical literary experiment where the setting is used to tell the story of a man’s phantom pregnancy…’
LYNDA NASH teaches us some useful tips on submitting to short story competitions, advice learnt the hard way: ‘So why did my precious literary effort fail to make an impression? Did it fit the competition criteria? No. Did it open with a bang? Again, no. Did it have a less-than-self-indulgent plot? No, it didn’t…’
ERINNA METTLER takes an in depth look at the controversy around Sarah Hall’s short story ‘Mrs Fox’, after it was aired on BBC Radio 4: ‘When the broadcast was over, there was a brief flutter of outrage on social media. The gist of this was that Hall’s story was overly similar to the 1922 novella Lady Into Fox by David Garnett…’
READ and DOWNLOAD: In a very special post, Dr José Francisco Fernández gives us the Introduction to The New Puritan Generation – the first collection of essays to address the importance of the New Puritan movement, in order to understand this generation of writers…
JULIET WEST ponders the role of women in George Saunders’ latest collection, Tenth of December: ‘I marvelled at the breakneck prose, the dark humour, the searing satire on Western consumerism. Yet, as I read, I began to experience an increasing sense of unease. At times, I felt as if I had landed in the fantasy world of a deviant male adolescent…’
‘The inaugural London Short Story Festival takes place from 20th to 22nd June, at Waterstones in Piccadilly, the largest bookshop in Europe…’ PAUL McVEIGH talks of the inspiration behind the Festival.
‘When we talk about editing short stories, and we do, a lot, we talk about cutting every word that doesn’t have to be in a story. But I’m not sure it’s always so simple…’ ANGELA READMAN examines the effects of Lish’s edits on Raymond Carver’s short stories.
Runner-up in the Thresholds Feature Writing Competition: DAN POWELL recommends Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s graphic short story collection The Push Man and Other Stories: ‘Each time I return to my well worn Drawn and Quarterly edition, I am struck by their undiminished capacity to unnerve…’
