Author: Jonathan Gibbs

‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’ by Jenny Zhang

Jenny Zhang’s short story collection Sour Heart is vivid, gross and hilarious – and ‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’ is no exception. It follows a nine-year-old girl, Lucy, whose youthful enthusiasm is played for laughs: “I lived, breathed, and exuded mind-boggling, head-spinning, neck-craning, heart-pounding, ravishing beauty. I was the best looking girl in fourth grade.” Yet as the story unfolds, we learn that Lucy is capable of acts of cruelty against the other girls in her life – both intentional and unintentional. The story ramps up to its horrifying climax, and the gap between Lucy’s understanding of the increasingly adult world around her and its consequences widens to a point of no return.

First published in Diagram, and available to read online here; collected in Sour Heart, Bloomsbury, 2017

‘Head to Toe’ by Abigail Ulman

Much like ‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’, this story from Abigail Ulman’s collection Hot Little Hands explores the complexities of girl friendships. The best friends in this story are Australian teenagers who are incredibly bored with their privileged lives – filled with shopping, boys, parties and occasional drug taking. The girls break out of their lethargy by revisiting a horse-riding camp they attended as younger girls, where they enjoy taking on the role of big sisters to their roommates at the camp and offering advice. This is an exquisitely written story about the liminal period of girlhood where the child’s impulse to play and pretend coexists with the desire to experiment with more adult behaviours.

Published in Hot Little Hands, Spiegel & Grau/Penguin, 2016

‘Would Like to Meet’ by May-Lan Tan

At the start of this story, struggling artist Vivien is robbed at knifepoint where she works, in a gift shop. This brush with death affects her profoundly – though at first, she doesn’t know how quite to express it. Eventually, she is compelled to respond to an advertisement listed in a magazine by a couple who are looking for a “conscious female” to join them. This is an elegant, moving story about loneliness and the fantasies we make up to get ourselves through difficult times.

First published in Things to Make and Break, CB Editions, 2014. New edition from Sceptre, 2018

‘The Weak Spot’ by Sophie Mackintosh

The first time I read this story, I could literally feel my brain firing with ideas. Through the invention of a dystopian world in which teenage girls are trained to murder men from a young age in order to protect themselves, Sophie Mackintosh examines the fine line between danger and power. Though the girls in this story take murder classes (otherwise known as “Specialised Life Skills for Girls”), the world they live in will never allow them to be treated as equals.

First published online by Granta, 2016, and available to read here

‘Mr Salary’ by Sally Rooney

This early Sally Rooney story is as sardonically funny as the title promises. It follows the complex relationship between Sukie and Nathan, who are sort of friends, sort of family and, by the end, a little bit lovers. Nathan is older and wealthier than Sukie; she is vulnerable and desperately in love with him. Their relationship, uncategorisable but deeply caring and affectionate, is used as a lens through which Rooney explores family, class and power dynamics. Sukie presents a very cool, funny and unaffected persona when she is with Nathan, but throughout the story we get glimpses of an emotional life bubbling just beneath the surface. Throughout, we wonder: is this love, or something more transactional?

First published by the Irish Times in 2017 and available to read here. Published as a paperback by Faber in 2019

‘Virgins’ by Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans’ story introduces us to a trio of teenage friends: Erica (our narrator), Jasmine and Michael. The three friends have an easy closeness which is shown through their witty, cutting and perfectly pitched dialogue. The teenagers exist in a world marked by danger and employ various strategies to keep themselves safe; nevertheless, as Erica observes, there is “no such thing as safe, only safer”. Their paths diverge sharply at a certain point in the story. Evans dissects, with breathtaking precision, the complex strategies girls employ to keep themselves safe in hostile situations.

First published in The Paris Review, Issue 182, Fall 2007. Available for subscribers to read here

‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Crafted with sharp, simmering tension and a relentless, dread-like momentum, Joyce Carol Oates’ 1966 story has become a contemporary classic. Fifteen-year-old Connie is a typical teenage girl: concerned with her looks, self-conscious, struggling with strained parental relationships. When a stranger arrives, who may not be exactly who he says he is, the story’s conclusion begins to feel inevitable, even pre-ordained. The story has a dreamlike quality that verges horrifyingly into nightmare as it illuminates the specific vulnerabilities of the teenage girl.

First published in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch magazine, collected in The Wheel of Love and Other Stories, Vanguard, 1970 and widely anthologised

‘The Moons of Jupiter’ by Alice Munro

This Alice Munro story is about the distances that open up between people in a family. The narrator, Janet, has a strained relationship with her older daughter, Nichola, who she is rarely in touch with and misses very much. Janet doesn’t seem to understand why she and Nichola are not close, but later in the story she recounts an event from Nichola’s childhood in which Janet chose to go through the motions of care but withdrew love in order to protect herself. This feels like a very human, self-preserving thing to do, but it has disastrous long-term consequences. This is a deeply affecting story — made even more so by the fact it feels impossible to read any work by Alice Munro and not acknowledge the fact she ignored the abuse of her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner for years.

First published in The New Yorker in May 1978 and available online for subscribers to read here; collected in The Moons of Jupiter, Macmillan, 1982; also in Selected Stories, 1996, Vintage Munro, 2004, and Carried Away, 2006

‘Longshore Drift’ by Julia Armfield

There’s something magical hovering at the edges of this story by Julia Armfield about queer desire, teenage awkwardness and chilly beaches. Though nothing actuallymagical happens, Armfield’s writing of place, and especially the sea, feels dreamlike and otherworldly.

First published in Granta 148, August 2019 and available online here

‘Cat Person’ by Kristen Roupenian

‘Cat Person’ may be most famous now as a movie featuring Emilia Jones and Greg from Succession, but before that, in 2017, it was the first short story to go ‘viral’ on the internet. It was published online around the time the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke. The story became a lightning rod for conversations about the nature of consent and the tricky landscape of contemporary dating. It was discussed and dissected ferociously online, as though it was a work of non-fiction – something which fascinated me. It’s not a perfect story, and with all things that become very popular very quickly, it has been torn to shreds by many. Nevertheless, the story managed to articulate something very specific that resonated with many people, especially women, and for that reason, I return to it often.

First published by The New Yorker in 2017 and available online here

Introduction

The short story is flourishing in the 21st century. It was always a place of wonder and joy, but back in the 20th century it is did not feature much at school for me, except as the ‘essays’ we wrote for homework. Mine were always ‘short stories’. However, my main interest at the time was science fiction. I read the alphabet, from Aldiss to Zelazny. I encountered a lot of advanced science concepts from my avid reading of SF, which were also not covered at school. But these close encounters led me towards a degree in physics. In mid-life, I returned to writing and have published fiction and poetry. My personal anthology begins with an SF story I read as a teenager. It is a pointer to themes in my other selections, and each story has a link to at least one other. I am interested in the worlds evoked by the stories.

Much wonderful short fiction today is published by small independent outfits, and they feature prominently in my selection.

‘Evidence’ by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov wrote extensively in his fiction about robots. One can trace the fascination with animating the inanimate back through recorded history and religious texts. Consider ‘men of clay’ and the notion of the ‘golem’. Asimov’s robots were made in the shape of men, sometimes uncannily human in appearance, with ‘positronic’ brains. They could operate autonomously, but Asimov set them up constrained by ‘The Three Laws of Robotics’, which prevented robots from harming humans or allowing them to come to harm from inaction on their part. Robots would sacrifice themselves for a human life. I was never clear that we could regard the robots as living beings. But perhaps they could be thought of as ‘sentient’. The emphasis in Asimov’s stories was on the positronic brain, but we humans don’t just think with our brains, our bodies and complex neurobiological activity are part of the story. How would the bodies and senses of a robot affect its thinking? Is it capable of emotion? But Asimov’s robots could be relied upon not to kill you, which is surely a good thing!

This one, ‘Evidence’, written in 1946, stuck in my mind, perhaps because it included a female scientist, Susan Calvin. In this story she attempts to prove the humanity of a character, the lawyer Stephen Byerley, who some believed had replaced himself with a robot after being seriously injured in a car accident.

Byerley ran for the position of mayor against an opponent who was suspicious that Byerley was not human. That he was never seen to sleep or eat was a factor. (Robots don’t need to do these things.) Susan Calvin produces an apple from her handbag. Byerley bites the apple. He must be human! (Reminds me of another story of a woman and an apple…) However, Calvin, privately, considers the possibility that Byerley has a stomach installed. Ultimately, she vouches for Byerley’s humanity, as even though she believes him to be a robot, she also believes that a robot would make a better mayor as he/it would never harm a human being. Susan Calvin lies for the sake of humanity. Byerley becomes mayor and later goes on to higher things. When he dies, his remains are atomised so that the evidence is forever hidden.

First published in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1946

‘Dialogue With a Somnambulist’ by Chloe Aridjis

This was my first encounter with the work of Chloe Ardijis and it was a wonderful surprise. Aridjis is an award-winning writer of Mexican extraction who now lives in London.

This is the title story of Ardijis’s collection, Dialogue with a Somnambulist: Stories, Essays & a Portrait Gallery. We discover the strange progression of a woman’s relationship with a man and a mannequin. One night after her evening meal she decides to take a walk. Should she go left into a busy street, or right into a quieter one? Her decision is to follow a plastic bag buffeted by the wind into the quieter street where the only other pedestrian is “one of those dark city angels who appear like holograms only to disappear a second later”.

The woman and the ‘angel’ end up walking to a bar, described as “the finest in the city”, but “only a select few were ever able to find it”. And the woman and her new companion succeed. Within, they find a collection of grotesques and smoke. She encounters the Somnambulist in a glass case. He is a waxwork mannequin – “Tall and regal and encased in darkness.” The enchantment begins, and the woman becomes a regular at the bar, each time inspecting the mannequin, fretting over his condition. She encounters a former boyfriend, Friedrich, and the two wonder if there is a spark left from their previous relationship. Without giving too much away, the story proceeds – Friedrich procures the Somnambulist – “who ever heard of shutting up a somnambulist when movement was what defined them.” It/he takes up residence in the woman’s bedroom. Pompei, as she calls him, begins to move… Read this excellent book to find out how it goes.

First published in Dialogue with a Somnambulist: Stories, Essays & a Portrait Gallery, House Sparrow Press, 2021. Expanded edition published in 2024