Let’s take a moment here to appreciate the work of all the literary magazines that tirelessly publish and promote short stories and which are more often than not a labour of love. Structo has for some years been one of the best, but it seems to have been on hiatus since 2023. Hopefully that won’t be a permanent state of affairs because it has introduced me to several excellent contemporary short story writers, including Richard Smyth. In ‘Empty Air’, a man spends his spare moments climbing various buildings around a city trying to set the clocks to the correct time. In teasing out the reasons for this, Smyth beautifully marries his narrator’s inner and outer lives. It’s a brilliant evocation of loss, isolation and loneliness.
Published in Structo #16, Autumn/Winter 2016; read online here
A Personal Anthology 