‘The Woman on the Dunes’ by Anais Nin

I loved Nin when I was in my early twenties; as I’ve gotten older, I still have an abiding respect.

For her bluntness, for her insistence on including the erotic in all things, in making it so central and complex. I still think she could have done more interesting things with adjectives, but this story of a horny man prowling a beach, the ensuing sex with a beautiful woman, and the unapologetically dark meta-fictive flourish at the end, is an example of Nin at her juicy best. I like that erectile dysfunction is handled with tenderness, not drama, that the limits of masculinity melt away in the kindness and the water. The repetition, the narrative of changing moods, the combat of it all, is so finely judged. Nin forensically collected and presented all those tiny, compulsive things that we need to get off. I truly think the world is a better place because of artists who take the textures of sex seriously.

First published in Little Birds, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. Currently available from Penguin Modern Classics, 2002. You can hear [a rather bad] reading of this story here

‘Beverley Home’ by Denis Johnson

This story comes from Johnson’s interconnected, profoundly weird collection, and is the one that I go back to read again and again. It’s about a voyeur who works in the titular Beverley Home for the disabled and elderly, who begins peeping into the home of a woman and her husband after the sound of her singing in the shower calls him in from the road on his way home. What strikes me is Johnson’s unsentimental presentation of the things we do when no one watches, and the weight and complexity of loneliness. He reminds me that the best writer lays judgement aside and just watches: witnesses possibilities, taboos, truths, and the scattered, slow, multi-layered world going by. Johnson’s ability to evoke the body, especially when that body is judged ‘ugly’ or broken, and his ability to make it all new again, gives me so much pleasure.

First published in The Paris Review, Fall 1992 and available online to subscribers here. Collected in Jesus’ Son, FSG, 1992/Granta Books, 2012

‘Bs’ by Eley Williams

I love this story. It really showcases the quietly amazing things the form can accomplish while championing Williams’s microscopic eye for detail. On one level it is a simple story of a woman listening to a bird and watching a bee, in bed with her lover, but of course, it is so much more than that. It is a hymn to tiny places and intimate moments, ‘in-between’ times that are so easily forgotten as we get on with the bigger events of life. The penultimate paragraph is a masterclass in narrative climax, and it makes me jealous. Lord have mercy, Williams is so good, with that comma in the air and her particular way of describing pillows…

First published in Attrib. and other stories, Influx Press, 2017

‘The Marmalade Factory’ by Louise Tondeur

“Is that why you’re a funny colour because your Dad did your mum in a jam factory?” Louise Tondeur’s sweet and affecting examination of a young mixed-race girl figuring out her identity, always leaves me thinking in vivid colours and wanting to eat cake. And make marmalade sandwiches. I suggest everyone read the story so they can see why that’s one of the sexiest ideas in the world.

First published in Unusual Places, Cultured Llama Publishing, 2018

‘Slack’ by Alexia Arthurs

Whether you relate to the teenage Pepper, so ashamed of her older lover and his three teeth-self, hanging outside her school gate, or to the many other kinds of Jamaican women so carefully showcased in this, Arthurs’s first collection, what we have here is an encyclopaedia of authenticity. Whether it’s language, sensibility, culture, or shades of light and dark, Arthurs knows Jamaicans to our bones and makes no apologies for us, calling us out and loving us to death by seeing exactly who are. I have quite a few favourites in this book, but I have to big-up ‘Slack’. This tragic tale of the death of two little girls and their mother, “slack woman” Pepper – so named because her mother sucked scotch bonnet peppers when she was pregnant – has a terrible tenderness. It is a quietly outraged, completely necessary elegy for all that black women could be and can’t be, because money and because judgement and because gossip and because, as they say in Jamaica, all that ‘slave mind’ still stinking up our shared air.

First published in How to Love a Jamaican, Penguin Random House, August, 2018

‘Talent’ by Niven Govinden

I know it’s tiny. I know that Niven Govinden is a tour de force of a novelist, voguing and slaying with every friggin’ long-form sentence. But this story, though. Given how much more he has done since this small slice of struttin’ perfection was published, I’d understand him being affronted that I chose this. But the criteria here is what stays with me, and this series of sentences from a gloriously fat Lancashire lass on the pole – Gypsy Rose Lee of Blackburn! – echoes, especially when as a fat woman, I feel less than fabulous. Flash fiction is a true skill, and Govinden’s ability to create multidimensional character, a world that convinces and bounces and glitters, to eviscerate limited ideas of female beauty, and to fashion a whole damn plot in just over 350 words has me bowing down every time. Some work exists to help mend our broken hearts and this is one of them.

First published in Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, October 2009. Read it online here

‘On a Very Dry Afternoon in Early Summer’ by Madeleine Morris

Morris (better known as her nom de plume @remittancegirl) writes about sex in a way I have never seen. The challenge she takes on here, introducing rape to an erstwhile loving couple (I won’t give away more) twists and undulates in ever-ragged, painful circles, as the story is repeatedly turned in on itself, its characters refusing to become what we want them to be. The story just stands there, staring at the very worst, best – and the most nuanced – aspects of humanity. This is a profound reading experience, not an easy one at all, and I have to take several very deep breaths, even now. I don’t know how Morris held the rudder on this one; no idea how she fine-tuned this truth. The clarity is heart-breaking. I think she’s an astonishing writer, this story makes me jealous, and I’m not sure everyone should or can or needs to read this. If there has ever been need of a trigger warning, this story needs one. But I know I admire the very pores of her for it.

First published http://www.remittancegirl.com. Not currently available

Fincham Press Flashes

At Fincham Press we publish, among other things, an annual student anthology. I’ve chosen my favourite tiny pieces of flash, most under 500 words [definitely under 1000] for your delectation.

In no particular order, the first is ‘Not Tonight’ by Charlotte Byrne (Purple Lights, 2016). Imagine the bingo. A special talent for accents. Imagine Bryne’s prose-flow, like a DJ on a mic, except she’s telling you about an extraordinary night in the ordinary life of a woman like yer gran. Chips in, quids in, triumphant. Byrne’s first novel, Folked Up, a comic YA ‘folk fantasy’, will be published in 2020 by Crystal Peake Publishing.

Second up is ‘One of Those’ by Nika Cobbett (Screams & Silences, 2015). This blistering tale about a child on holiday with her father astonishes me each time I read it. Cobbett is already so wise about humanity, and her ability to hold a sacred, quivering space for pain is impressive. By the time that kid makes it out into the dirty sea, “rubbish rolling in and out on wave tips”, I am in tears.

Number Three is ‘Sitting Between’ by Haleh Agar (The Unseen, 2017) A younger man, a dark aeroplane, and a blanket all taken together sounds sordid, but I’m pretty convinced is going to be the one who breaks your heart in 2020. Agar has tremendous restraint and her work is instinctively, effortlessly sexy, which is exactly how sexy should be. Her first novel Out of Touch will be published in 2020 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Our penultimate shout-out is ‘White Walls’ by Steph Elliot Vickers (In Which Dragons Are Real But, 2018). Vickers writes about sadness exquisitely, and this story is no exception. It witnesses the fall-out of a marriage gone wildly bad, but more than that it is a story about how sensitive children cope with pain and a slicing condemnation of the present welfare state in Britain.

Finally, read Rebecca Shoulders’ ‘Steady’ (The Box, 2019). Shoulders uses an extended and delicate metaphor to examine the abiding nature of companionship, choosing her words with a deft hand. She can do dark and she can do light and trees and tea and the telly in front of the sofa, and most of all, she can do quiet love.

All Fincham Press anthologies can be bought on Amazon.co.uk or directly from the publisher at https://fincham.press/catalogue/, because that way you support a small press!

Introduction to an Italian Personal Anthology

This is one of a special series of Personal Anthology letters celebrating the short-form literature of the 27 countries of the European Union alongside the UK, which as of the time of writing is still a member

We decided to approach this personal anthology as a group exercise to see what kind of “literary constellation” we would be able to draw together. Together we organise the Festival of Italian Literature, which will take place this weekend at the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill, but the many tasks of this activity means that we talk a lot about organisation issues and about contemporary authors that we’d like to invite to the festival, and not always as much as we’d like about the modern classics that we love.

For this reason, we welcomed the idea of putting together our personal anthology of Italian short stories. We focused mainly on Italian literature from the twentieth century, and after a quick brainstorming we were glad to see there were a few common themes in our choices: one is the never-ending tension, in Italian literature, between realism and non-realism. Traditionally, the best-known Italian literature (as much as Italian cinema) in the last century or so has always been quite political in its inspiration and strictly realistic, favouring a portrait of society, social class, historical facts, family and generations, and so on. But on the fringes of the main canon you can find amazing visionary stories, some of which are very political in their own way. Another common theme in our choices is the “gaze”, the theme of seeing and being seen, the literal or metaphorical difference between being blind or able to see and to acknowledge the (real) world around you…

Marco Mancassola, Marco Magini and Giorgia Tolfo

‘Un paio di occhiali’ (‘A Pair of Eyeglasses’) by Anna Maria Ortese, translated by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee

Though she’s one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century, the rediscovery of Ortese’s work is quite recent. Il mare non bagna Napoli is a collection of five stories where the author recounts the wretched conditions of Naples after WW2. The book was highly criticised by the Neapolitan intellectuals who were depicted in one of the stories, and due to the criticism Ortese decided to leave Naples, the city she loved the most.

‘A Pair of Eyeglasses’ is the first story of the collection and is about a girl from a poor neighbourhood of Naples – due to her poor sight, she is given a pair of specs by her aunt, who sacrifices more than “ten days of bread” to buy them. When she tries the specs in the shop, the girl – Nunziata – is very excited as she can finally see a world previously unknown to her, shining and opulent, but when she tries them on later in her poor neighbourhood she realises she’s surrounded by misery and filth, not by the world she had imagined so far. Blindness, we discover with Nunziata, had protected her from acknowledging her real social status.

Ortese depicts Nunziata’s slump of hopes with an unparalleled intensity and suggests, with heartbreaking force, that dreams and happiness are tied and proportional to one’s social class.

First published in Il mare non bagna Napoli, Einaudi, 1953 / Latest English version in Evening Descends Upon the Hills, Pushkin Press, 2018

‘Nel museo di Reims’ (‘In the Museum of Reims’) by Daniele Del Giudice

Daniele Del Giudice’s short stories are little gems, masterpieces where the precision of the writing encounters the mystery of perceptions, and it is no surprise that his writing has a cult following in Italy and France. ‘In the Museum of Reims’ is a short novella and possibly his most famous story, one that moves us greatly for its simplicity and perfection, as well as its poetical depth.

Barnaba is losing his sight and before darkness envelopes him, he wants to see the paintings he loves the most and consign them to his memory. The story opens at the museum in Reims where he wants to see The Death of Marat, a painting that he knows well, not only because of its countless versions, but because Marat himself used to be a doctor who healed people affected by blindness. While wandering in the rooms of the museum, he’s joined by Anne, a stranger, who starts describing him the paintings he’s struggling to see. But is Anne describing the paintings as they appear? Is she projecting her desires on them? Or Barnaba’s? Is she lying? How can colours be described? How can human beings bond over a common desire to see and share their visions?

First published by Mondadori, 1988

‘La Luna e Gnac’ (‘Moon and Gnac’) by Italo Calvino, translated by William Weaver

Marcovaldo is a popular character who shaped our childhood and imagination. Created by the genius of Italo Calvino during the Italian economic boom, Marcovaldo’s stories tell about the character’s life and family, whose mediocre everyday existence is punctuated by sudden discoveries and epiphanies. Despite living in a cold grey city, Marcovaldo is always able to spot a touch of poetry, the hidden beauty of daily life; yet in the background we can see the dawn of consumerist society with all its ambiguities. In these stories, Calvino’s style combines melancholy and fun, farce and fantasy.

In ‘Moon and Gnac’, the view of the night sky from Marcovaldo’s family home is thwarted by the commercial sign of Spaak Cognac, a neon sign that turns itself on and off every twenty seconds. After his son Michelino destroys the sign with his sling, one of the competitors of Spaak, Cognac Tomawak, offers to hire Marcovaldo’s family in order to make Spaak go bankrupt. But once they succeed, the original neon sign is replaced by a similar, even more annoying one from Tomawak. Calvino captures a moment of transformation in 1960s Italian life, when Italian society is irremediably losing its innocence.

First published in Marcovaldo, Einaudi, 1963. Published in English in Marcovaldo: or The Seasons in the City, Vintage, 2001

‘Un marziano a Roma’ (‘A Martian in Rome’) by Ennio Flaiano, translated by Philip Balma and Fabio Benincasa

Ennio Flaiano was a journalist, writer, and screenwriter who chronicled like no one else the restlessness of Italian society in the 20th century. As a screenwriter he is famous for being among the authors of La dolce vita by Federico Fellini; Fellini considered directing a film adaptation of ‘A Martian in Rome’ too, but the project fell through. Meanwhile, Flaiano’s short story became a popular stage play, and later a TV adaptation filmed in the 1980s by another director.

The story centres on Kunt, an alien from Mars, who lands with his spaceship in Rome near Villa Borghese. Initially, his arrival creates a sensation among citizens and the media: everyone wants to see him, greet him, talk to him, interview him. The event is so significant that Kunt is even received by the Pope. However, after some time the Romans get used to seeing the alien around, and begin to ignore him. No one cares about Kurt anymore, the novelty of his arrival is soon forgotten, and the Martian wanders sad and alone through the streets of the city. By the end of the story, people are openly mocking him, to the point that he decides to leave.

First published in Diario notturno, Rizzoli, 1956. Collected in The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, edited by Jhumpa Lahiri, 2019

‘Trattamento di quiescenza’ (‘Retirement Fund’) by Primo Levi, translated by Jenny McPhee

This year is the 100th anniversary of Primo Levi’s birth, and we never tire of reading and re-reading his work. Everyone rightly knows him as an immensely important writer of the Holocaust, but Levi had a wide range of interests and was also a superb science fiction writer. His collection Natural Histories, published in the 1960s,is a book full of pioneering sci-fi stories, where Levi’s scientific background meets a vivid and prophetic imagination. The last story of the book, ‘Retirement Fund’, centres around a character presenting to a potential buyer the Torec, a helmet that works as a virtual reality recorder by connecting directly to the brain: back in the 1960s, Primo Levi was imagining an early version of the devices later popularised by films like Strange Daysor by several episodes of Black Mirror.

First published in Storie naturali, Einaudi, 1966. Collected in The Complete Works of Primo Levi, edited by Ann Goldstein, introduced by Toni Morrison, Liveright 2015