Introduction

By way of an introduction, what introduction can there be, that you, dear reader, since you’re visiting here, will not have heard before? All the quotes, the eulogies, the paeans to the short story form, you’ll be familiar with. You won’t want to read them again. Nor will you want to hear what brilliant pieces I’ve left out, or how I feel strangely guilty about omitting some of my favourites. But I’ll say this: that, in the largely bookless working class household in which I was brought up, stories, orally delivered, were colour, excitement, thrill, even transgression; sitting shock-headed at the knees of my grandparents and absorbing their tales of war, of the old countries, of ghosts and the restless, garrulous dead, the world seemed at once comprehensible and less confusing but also more terrifying and ineffable. What a strange power narrative has.