‘The Need for Something Sweet’ by Nadine Gordimer

Like ‘A Scandalous Woman’, ‘The Need for Something Sweet’ is the story of a formative but unequal friendship. In its case, the narrator is a young man, and the person to whom he attaches an attractive older woman by the name of Anita Gonsales. When they first meet, through the man’s job at the Civil Service’s international telephone exchange, he sees romance in the woman’s attempts to contact her estranged husband in Spain. In his innocence, it signifies a life lived.

As they get sexually involved with one another, however, he soon realises the truth: that she is a sad, lonely alcoholic whom he is far too green to help. Fast-forward thirty-one years and we now find our narrator middle-aged, materially successful but no more happy in life and marriage than Anita Gonsales. The perplexing thing she said when they first met – “You don’t realise it will all happen to you” – now makes perfect, haunting sense to him.

First published in the New Review, January/February 1977. Collected in A Soldier’s Embrace, Jonathan Cape, 1980

‘The Mobile Bed Object’ by Patricia Highsmith

The title of this bald and brutal story is about as euphemistic as it gets. “There are lots of girls like Mildred,” goes its more characteristic first sentence, “homeless, yet never without a roof – most of the time the ceiling of a hotel room, sometimes that of bachelor digs, of a yacht’s cabin if they’re lucky, a tent, or a caravan. Such girls are bed-objects, the kind of things one acquires like a hot water bottle, a travelling iron, an electric shoe-shiner, any little luxury of life … they are interchangeable.”

Terms defined, Highsmith proceeds to chronicle Mildred’s life, from her leaving home at fifteen to “the danger age” of twenty-three at which the value of a woman in her line of work diminishes. “Want[ing] to continue the same life but with a greater sense of security”, she attaches herself to wealthy, jet-setting Sam Zupp, who provides her with everything but that one big “nest egg” she needs to retire and escape this grim existence. If you’ve read any other of Highsmith’s Little Tales of Misogyny, in which disturbing book this story was collected, you’ll know not to expect a happy ending.

First published in a German translation as part of Kleine Geschichten für Weiberfeinde, Diogenes Verlag, 1975. The collection came out in English under the title Little Tales of Misogyny, Heinemann, 1977 – and reissued as a Virago Modern Classic in 2014. This particular story was published in the New Review in August of the same year

‘Obsessions’ by Francis Wyndham

“I still dream about the Manor, although I have not seen it for over thirty years and could not have entered it more than a dozen times in the days when I lived nearby.”

If the opening to ‘Obsessions’ leads us to expect a Rebecca-style gothic, then the character introductions that follow it soon put us right. There are the owners of the Manor, Sir Jocelyn Bignall and his wife Lady Bignall, “whose first name, by fateful coincidence, was also Jocelyn”. There is Lady Bignall’s daughter by her first marriage, Madge, who has “married a soldier much older than herself; General Sir Archie Fuller was indeed nearly the same age as Sir Jocelyn.” And then there is the Fuller’s son, “named after his grandmother and therefore confusingly called Jocelyn too.”

They are clowns, in short, but still, by dint of their rank, figures of awe and fascination for our narrator, who is terrified when his near-contemporary, the youngest Jocelyn, invites him to tea. Refusing this first invitation after some hilarious agonising about what excuse to give, he accepts the next one, and thereafter his life becomes forever entwined with theirs. His ambivalence speaks powerfully to how we still think about class in Britain.

First published in the New Review, September 1977. Collected in Mrs Henderson and Other Stories, Jonathan Cape, 1985

‘The Loneliness of the Short Story Writer’ by Shashi Tharoor

Now a prominent figure in Indian politics, Shashi Tharoor was just twenty-one when he sold this story to the New Review. Reminiscent in its comedy of Updike’s Henry Bech stories, it has for a protagonist a writer with a quite different problem to the perennially blocked Bech: Jennings Wilkes can’t stop writing.

This would be fine were it not for the “verisimilitude” of his work: “He never concocted his plots: he found them in the quotidian experiences of living. He never created characters: he borrowed his friends, and occasionally his enemies, and populated his manuscripts with their likenesses.” The result has been his systematic alienation from everyone he has ever known and cared about, as well as the torching of every new relationship he forms; he just cannot help laying bare their lives and weaknesses in print.

It’s a terrific conceit and Tharoor has great fun with it – as do we. The story can also be read more satirically, however: as a critique of those writers like Updike, Bellow and Roth (much of the story takes place on a psychiatrist’s couch) who did so unthinkingly lift straight from life. Tharoor reckons with the ethics of this – and in a prose every bit the equal of those writers’. It’s amazing he was just twenty-one.

First published in the New Review, March 1978. Collected in The New Review Anthology, Heinemann, 1985; also collected in The Five Dollar Smile and Other Stories, Viking, 1990, under the title ‘The Solitude of the Short-Story Writer’

Introduction

As a writer myself, I seek originality and excellence in craft as well as narrative accessibility in the work I read; it’s a rare story that can entertain me and blow me away at the same time, but each of the following pieces achieved this rarity with aplomb. Since I’m involved in the online lit community, I’ve chosen to include some stories—spanning a range of genres and voices—which readers may not have otherwise come across but which are extremely worth their time.

‘Mal de Caribou’ by Becca de la Rosa

A lot of my favourite kind of work revolves around identity, and a huge part of who we are is what we eat. In this savage, beautiful story, the opposite is true—the main character is employed as a chef by an elderly woman called Dorothy. The recipes produced are sublime, their effect on Dorothy is rapturous. However, in between these moments of epicurean joy, the nameless chef recalls memories of her partner, a woman called Leda who suffers from anorexia. The use of sensory imagery and tactile language is hauntingly underscored with taut agony; the story clamps down onto the meat of childhood, and pares gristle from bone until we finally understand the purpose of the specially curated meal plans made with only Dorothy in mind. Revenge, here, is a dish best served gourmet.

“I imagined myself an abuelita chomping her sweetness with my teeth. Saying ai, qué rico. How delicious. There in the hospital I took her face in my hands. Felt its angles, its ursine lanugo. God, I said. God. God. You were beautiful.”

First published in The Dark, May 2018 and available to read here

‘Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman’ by Harlan Ellison

In Ellison’s satirical story, the world has become obsessed with punctuality and rigorous time-keeping, all under the watchful eye of the Ticktockman, who has the power to shorten lifespans as a punishment to those who cannot keep up with a scheduled society. The titular Harlequin works to undermine these carefully regimented routines, and in doing so, threatens the very fabric of the world, for such totalitarian societies rely heavily on threats and punishments to maintain conformity amongst the ranks. The Harlequin’s disruptions are whimsical rather than violent—showering factory workers with brightly coloured jellybeans, for example—and it is exactly this quality which so frightens the Ticktockman, and undermines his power and authority.

“Even in the cubicles of the hierarchy, where fear was generated, seldom suffered, he was called the Ticktockman. But no one called him that to his mask. You don’t call a man a hated name, not when that man, behind his mask, is capable of revoking the minutes, the hours, the days and nights, the years of your life. He was called the Master Timekeeper to his mask. It was safer that way.”

First published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, 1965, and collected in Paingod and other Delusions, 1965, with various later editions. Also available in World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966, Ace Books, 1966)

‘The Fruit of the Princess Tree’ by Sage Tyrtle

As a friend of the author, I was lucky enough to read this one before it was accepted and knew instantly that it would be. The branches of the titular Princess Tree are weighed down with seventeen tiny cages, each containing a single princess.

“Inside every cage is a furled flower, trembling with promise, blushing petals soft as the thought of a summer cloud. None of the cages have doors.”

This odd fruit apparently exists only to be plucked by a handsome, kind prince. These men appear from time to time to select the princess which suits them best, though the royals aren’t all handsome and they certainly aren’t all kind. Princess Seventeen’s carefully curated worldview begins to crumble in the face of reality; not all princesses are picked, and those who are face uncertain fates. Some wither on the vine. Some try to free themselves, while some are unable to even comprehend the idea of escape, even if it means their imminent death. Tyrtle takes a simple premise and wields it with devastating, poetic precision; rarely have I read a story which cut me to the bone quite so deeply.

First published in Apex Magazine, May 2022, and available to read here

‘We, The Girls Who Did Not Make It’ by E.A. Petricone

This story is told from the perspective of the ghosts of young women who’ve all been brutally murdered in one particular basement. To make matters more complicated, the murderers in question are two young men, Rolly and Trevor, and one young woman, Sandy, who “may not have led us with a trail of gumdrops and the promise of a candy house, but she smiled at us, laughed openly, so friendly, put us at ease as we slid into their car. Look, they’ve got a woman with them, we thought. They must not be murderers.”

Sandy believes that her position as bait and accomplice keeps her safe; Sandy is wrong.

As we learn more about the ghosts, the author drops tantalising glimpses of their backstories—just enough to satiate, just enough to build a coherent narrative about who they once were and who they now are, and just enough to lay the perfect breadcrumb trail to a dramatic, tense, heart-in-your-throat finale.

First published in Nightmare Magazine, February 2021 and available to read online here

‘In the Hills, the Cities’ by Clive Barker

A classic horror tale from the master himself, featuring two gay men on a road trip through eastern Europe, realising that their short relationship is already coming to an end largely because of their opposite personalities. “In Italy the sermon had been on the way the Communists had exploited the peasant vote. Now, in Yugoslavia, Judd had really warmed to his theme, and Mick was just about ready to take a hammer to his self-opinionated head.”

Despite this, the men find brief respite in their sexual connection, though their happiness is short-lived. Barker—who came out late in life—deftly leads the tale away from the literary mountain and plunges it deep into a horrifying, speculative valley. The foreshadowing throughout the piece creates a sense of eerie, rural dread, and makes the tale worth reading over and over again.

First published in Books of Blood Volume 1, Sphere Books, 1984

‘The Fifth Story’ by Clarice Lispector

Lispector is a firm favourite among Personal Anthology entries, and for good reason. While I adore her work in a more general sense, it’s the boundary-pushing stories which captivate me and inspire me in equal measures. A woman whose apartment is suffering from a cockroach infestation might at first seem like a mundane problem with a simple solution, but Lispector turns it into an art form by repeating the story five times. Each time the story is told, Lispector adds more detail, peeling back layer by layer of metafiction, until the tale is no longer really about the cockroaches at all, but about the ways in which the narrator craves power and yet is afraid to wield it.

“This story could be called “The Statues.” Another possible title would be “The Killing.” Or even “How to Kill Cockroaches.” So I shall tell at least three stories, all of them true, because none of the three will contradict the others.”

First published in the collection A legião estrangeira, translated as The Foreign Legion, New Directions, 1964; also available in the Complete Stories, New Directions/Penguin Classics, 2015)

‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ by Ambrose Bierce

A wealthy planter and slave owner, Peyton Farquhar, decides to sabotage the nearby railroad in order to help Confederate soldiers. His action earns him a death sentence. Awaiting his hanging, Farquahar is terrified by a clanging sound—the ticking of his watch—as the seconds flash past, spelling his doom. Though he falls through the bridge, he lands in the river:

“The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!–the idea seemed to him ludicrous.”

Farquhar swims to safety amid a hail of bullets and journeys back to his home through hallucinations of glorious natural beauty, all the while thinking of his wife and children. This was the first short story I ever remember reading as a teenager, and the first time I realized that a tale did not have to be linear, did not have to follow a specific path, and could twist like a serpent at the last moment, landing a final, venomous bite on the reader.

First published in the San Francisco Examiner, 1890 and widely available

‘A Short And Slightly Speculative History of Lavoisier’s Wife’ by Amber Sparks

As someone who enjoys the history of science—frequently petty, often blood-soaked, and always entertaining—I knew that Antoine Lavoisier was a famous French scientist who met his untimely end under the blade of a guillotine. His wife, with whom he conducted his experiments, is a much less well-known figure. Here, Sparks reimagines her story, taking facts and blending them with fiction to create a hilarious and touching tale of a remarried (but, crucially, not renamed, though she was now technically a Countess) Madame Lavoisier, who trolls her new husband expertly and texts Charlotte Corday with barf emojis about the term ‘helpmeet’. Under Spark’s adept hands, the tale is spun with just the right amount of controlled chaos and seething anger to convey a particular feeling of erasure that women see happen to others so often throughout the historical canon and can’t help wondering if it will also happen to them.

“Lavoisier’s wife probably said something like, Oh, Mr. Thompson, didst thou discover phlogistan? Doest thou even know what phlogistan is? Yeah, prithee I did not think so…

Lavoisier’s wife did not sound like a sitcom character, of course. We are sorry to have previously given that impression. History does not record any extraordinary level of sassiness on her part.”

First published in Outlook Springs, October 2018, and available to read here

‘But Don’t You Ever Think of Sex, Viskovitz?’ by Alessandro Boffa

This entire collection is centred around the main character Viskovitz, who is represented in each short story as a totally different animal, but who repeatedly searches for—and sometimes finds—his soulmate, Ljuba. Boffa’s sense of irony and playful inventiveness shines through in these tales, showcasing very human foibles through a series of different species and genres; his training as a biologist is clear in the amount of loving, careful detail which goes into each story. The one I’ve picked is an oddity even among this collection, as Viskovitz is a proud intersex snail who falls in love with their own body, to the chagrin of those around them.

“’This is nothing but a typical example of the collapse of gastropodic society,’ said one. ‘The “I” has replaced society and the narcissistic personality triumphs. We are falling back on the personal and the private.

I confess I was falling back on my privates rather willingly. It was one of the few advantages of not having a spine.”

First published as Sei una bestia, Viskovitz, Edizioni Garzanti, 1998, and translated as You’re An Animal, Viskovitz, Random House, 2002