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…’
AIMEE McCAGUE attempts to see past the author we all know to the meaning of ‘The Library of Babel’: ‘Borges’ story tells of an infinite library, a universe in itself in which the inhabitants desperately search for meaning in the form of the mythical ‘Vindications’ that allegedly tell their future…’
SHAFIQAH SAMARASAM looks at the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories of Jhumpa Lahiri: ‘Her magnificent stories will echo in the lives of many foreign people because of the strength of her portrayal of their lives…’
HANNAH BROCKBANK recommends the anthology that explores the experiences of refugees and those who work with them, REFUGEE TALES: ‘In tale after tale, physical environments are unforgiving and divisive. Conflicts are both physical and moral, and there is little resolution for the people described. The tales are challenging and resonate long after reading, not only because of their traumatic content, but also in the way they confront our attitudes and responsibilities to our fellow humans…’
MIKE SMITH has a close look at Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s short story ‘Captain Knot’: ‘Q is a straightforward writer in many ways, but his simple, accessible language carries subtleties of meaning that raise questions we, rather than he, are to answer…’
FRANCES GAPPER discusses the life and stories of Robert Aickman: ‘Aickman thought the ghost story akin to poetry in its compression and intensity, and his work has been described as ‘English Eerie’ and ‘English Kafka’…’
DAVID FRANKEL rediscovers the forgotten short stories of Shelagh Delaney: ‘the vitality of her stories comes from her extraordinary talent for dialogue. She captures the rhythm of rapid conversation between characters – the firing back and forth and its underlying humour…’
ANDISWA ONKE MAQUTU explores the feminist and patriarchal themes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck: ‘It is a collection exploring migration: its freedoms, the way it opens new worlds, new ways of seeing an old and familiar world, the protection of the new world, and also the limits it places on Africans…’
