My selection of short stories follows the seasons, month by month. I imagined them as a collection to read slowly as the year unfolds. I had a brilliant time gathering my favourites and reminding myself of the great sentences, as well as scenes that symbolised the rhythms of the natural world: Katherine Mansfield’s pear tree in spring, Shirley Jackson’s dark, unfriendly streets of New York giving an eerie autumn atmosphere.
There’s so much I love about all these stories, not only the way they allow me to mark each month of the year. They each depict the inner lives of women, show the ways we can’t always express how we feel, and have an element of ghosts, hauntings or the surreal. Perfect!
A Personal Anthology 