I selected this story when Liars’ League canvassed the Liars and some of their more frequently published authors for their favourite ever short stories, so it would be remiss of me not to include it here, even if has already (rightly) found its way into other personal anthologies.
What ‘The Landlady’ does beautifully is skirt the tightrope of too much information and not enough. Our protagonist is oblivious, but we can hardly claim that privilege. There are enough hints and foreshadowing to make us wary of what happens next, we know something dark is coming, even if we’re not sure what it is, nor whether Billy will see it in time. We, as an audience, are being played, subtly, delicately, deliciously. And the story might not work for everyone (does any story?), but it works near perfectly for me, even on a re-read, solidating its inclusion.First published in The New Yorker, November 1959 and available to read online here. Collected in Kiss Kiss, Knopf, 1960, currently available from Penguin. Also in The Complete Short Stories Vol 2, Penguin, 2013
A Personal Anthology 