Prose that Packs a Punch
EMILY BULLOCK experiences the shock of connection in the writing of F.X. Toole: ‘During my research I was constantly asked the question, Why Boxing? And my reply was: Have you ever read Rope Burns?’
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Australian Life in Suburbia
MARJORIE LEWIS-JONES recommends the short stories of Australian author Mark O’Flynn: ‘His short stories simmer with suburban uneasiness, dislocation and melancholy, and voices that are both familiar and eccentric. They also tap the rich vein of comedy that lurks beneath life’s awkward and painful moments…’
Writing In The Dark
LYNDA NASH guides us through a selection of exercises to battle those writing demons: ‘It’s difficult to write when your inner critic is telling you that your ideas are stupid, that you couldn’t string a decent sentence together to save your life, and that if you were a ‘proper writer’ you wouldn’t get blocked in the first place…’
Eclecticism: How Unthology Works
ASHLEY STOKES, editor of the Unthology series from UnthankBooks, talks to us about what he is looking for in short story submissions: ‘When sifting through the submissions pile, we often come across the same one told over and over again. Recently, it’s been a middle-aged couple, on holiday in the Med, and one of them slopes off and has a crafty joint and thinks about a younger, more carefree self. Great storytellers take risks…’
The Love Story of Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’
Professor CHARLES E. MAY examines the love story of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ by Annie Proulx: ‘The fact of the matter is: Jack and Ennis love each other – with tenderness, passion, and concern – and people who love each other in this way – regardless of their gender – desire to be physically close…’
Love and Ageing in the Stories of Juan Goytisolo
PATRICIA DUFFAUD examines the short stories in Juan Goytisolo’s The Party’s Over – Four Attempts to Define a Love Story: ‘We feel the heat, we see and smell the “piles of pressed grapes fermenting in the sun” and we are there, trapped with the characters inside their lives…’
Abandoned
‘From the story’s opening, there has always been violence lurking at the periphery, like the many tentacled horrors of a story by Lovecraft…’ MORGAN OMOTOYE explores the darkness and beauty of Denis Johnson’s short story ‘Two Men’.
The Embedded Narratives of D. H. Lawrence
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…’
The Dark Satire of H.H.Munro
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.’
The Moral Crossroads of Marc Le Goupils
MIKE SMITH unearths the moral dilemmas of Marc Le Goupils’ short story ‘The Cross-Roads’: ‘Laid almost reverently in the wheelbarrow, with a soft pillow to support her head, the gypsy woman is trundled from place to place in search of somewhere she can die, at someone else’s expense…’