MIKE SMITH learns much from Elizabeth Bowen’s collected works on the art of beginning a short story: ‘The beginnings of stories, and not only short stories, was the first facet of fiction that I began to consciously study, rather than merely notice…’
THRESHOLDS Assistant Editor DAVID FRANKEL interviews author David Swann on his latest flash collection, Stronger Faster Shorter: ‘My fiction is usually too poetic, and my poetry’s too narrative-based. I think of ‘flash’ as some sort of ‘third space’ between poetry and fiction…’
VICTORIA HEATH looks at the story that made her want to write, ‘First Love, Last Rites’ by Ian McEwan: ‘The ‘it’ is often referred to more sinisterly as the ‘creature’ and it’s the crux that McEwan uses to turn this story from that of a starry-eyed relationship into something darker and far more interesting…’
LELA TREDWELL recommends Robert Shearman’s collection Everyone’s Just So So Special: ‘His writing is as good as you’re going to get to a dictionary definition of special: ‘better, greater and otherwise different from what is usual’. And it’s for his third collection of short stories, in particular, that he is just so, so special, to me…’
MIKE SMITH finds seven short stories by Prosper Mérimée in The World’s Thousand Best Short Stories and asks what unites them: ‘…is there a Prosper Mérimée stamp upon them? Is there the common hallmark of the short story, whatever that might be?’
DAVID FRANKEL reflects on Beta Life from Comma Press, an anthology of short fiction and essays: ‘…what makes these stories particularly interesting is how they explore what it is that makes us human, the things at the core of how we react to the world…’
RAJAT CHAUDHURI examines the tension in love stories by Hemingway, Calvino and Chekhov: ‘What ties these stories together and sets them apart from others is an undertow of tension.’
We are pleased to bring you the foreword to Writing Short Stories, by acclaimed author Kate Clanchy: ‘The short story, in contrast, shines a harsh light on every word you write and neither gives you a shape nor forgives you for getting the shape wrong…’
STEPHEN DEVEREUX takes us into the surreal underworld of Graham Greene’s short Story ‘Under the Garden’: ‘Greene plays with our desire for a plausible explanation, for a resolution of the mystery, but never supplies one…’
‘I have come across quite a few such readers who react vehemently to the Saunders worldview. They wonder why he bends the moral situation so far that it almost breaks. But some, like me, may beg to differ…’ JOSE VARGHESE takes us into the intricacies of George Saunders’ ‘Escape from Spiderhead’.
