‘Acid’ by James Kelman

‘Acid’ is an extremely short story – just one paragraph peppered with Kelman’s trademark sharp observations. ‘Acid’ is one of the most visceral, visually shocking stories I’ve ever come across and I will boldly claim it is the best short story I’ve ever read. Kelman wields such a fierce power, sharpening his writers’ tools, in his bold, colloquial Glaswegian voice. The ending sees a man in a factory – “who was also the young man’s father” – dispose of his son in an utterly horrifying act of love. This is a brutal and exceptional story. if you’ve never read it, I strongly urge you to do so!

First published in Not Not While the Giro, Polygon, 1983, and available in Tales of Here and Then, thi wurd, 2020

‘So Much Water So Close to Home’ by Raymond Carver

I first encountered Carver’s short stories when I was a teenager, trawling the local library for things I hadn’t already read. At the time, I couldn’t work out if he liked people or not, but I was drawn to his style and his acute observations of relationships between men and women.

In ‘So Much Water…’ Claire, the narrator, is shocked to discover that her husband and his buddies have found the body ofa dead girl washed up on the shore upon arrival for their annual camping trip. Instead of reporting this to the police, the men carry on with their boys’ weekend, merrily fishing, eating, and drinking whisky. Reading it again, I share Claire’s horror and disbelief.

Carver writes with detached observation about the disillusionment of men in mid-century America, his emotionallydisengaged characters full of grimy, unapologetic bluntness. Marriage and domestic life – meal times, conversation, sex – are all portrayed with a scary kind of detachment, devoid of passion or feeling.

First published in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Knopf, 1981

‘Car Crash While Hitchhiking’ by Denis Johnson

I first came across Denis Johnson in my late teens, still living in Scotland and hanging out with artists though I was going to work in a psychiatric hospital every day. I loved American literature and I still love Jesus’ Son. I must have read it dozens of times.It’s a collection of 11 perfect, inter-related short stories. And it is brutally honest and painfully beautiful, set in a down-and-out world of drugs and drink. Johnson sculpts his shambolic characters with heart-breaking honesty. But there’s always an underlying compassion, even if covered up by layers of trauma and dissociation. This story is told from the perspective of a seemingly homeless, clairvoyant, unnamed narrator who appears to have hitchhiked with several people involved in a devastating accident. Our narrator appears to have predicted the event.

“I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it glowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside it I knew we’d have an accident in the storm.”

This devastating piece is surely a masterclass in short story writing.

First published in Jesus’ Son, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992, and available to read online here

‘Plastering the Cracks’ by Janice Galloway

I’m sure I first heard about Janice Galloway via James Kelman. I went along to an event where she was reading from her first novel The Trick is To Keep Breathing at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine in 1991 or thereabouts. I regularly call her the queen, as she is without a doubt up there with my absolute favourites. Her writing is visceral, unnerving, and fierce. (She’s also from Ayrshire!)

‘Plastering the Cracks’ is a tense, noir-esque piece, where a young woman employs some builders but, later, eavesdropping through the wall, becomes worried about their intentions. Janice Galloway writes with a looming sense of danger and her landscape is filled with brutal men, often drunks, and women living in fear of their actions. I love her use of dialect and the directness of her dialogue – no speech marks, immersing you into her words and her world.

First published in Blood, Secker and Warburg/Random House, 1991

‘The Lighthouse’ by Agnes Owens

I’m sure I first heard about Agnes Owens via my English teacher, in fifth year at Prestwick Academy. Scottish literature owes so much to Agnes Owens, yet she remains painfully so under-acknowledged. Her writing is bold, brutal, and darkly funny.

Agnes Owens describes a beach is full of threats and dangers. A young girl wants to go to the lighthouse, but her younger brother does not. She warns him that a monster might get him if he doesn’t comply. His understanding of “monster” is bizarre, and we worry about threats coming from everywhere and anywhere. A dark story beautifully told.

First published in People Like That, Bloomsbury, 1996

‘Extremadura’ by Kevin Barry

Kevin Barry is the writer everyone wants to write like. I came across his work during lockdown and couldn’t get enough. The dialect, the darkness, the lyricism. He’s a literary trickster extraordinaire. You read one Barry and you want to read them all. Then all over again.

‘Extremadura (Until Night Falls)’ has at its centre a typical Barry character, a man who has landed in Spain, fleeing his Irish family ties, escaping his life. As often is the case, there’s a dog, a girl, and a melancholy heart. But familiar characters aside, there’s nothing ordinary about Kevin Barry’s dark Spanish tale. It pounds with the heartbeat of the west of Ireland.

First published in That Old Country Music, Canongate 2020

‘Polluted Sex’ by Lauren Foley

Lauren Foley’s writing is experimental, at times diary-like, scientific and explicit. There are no sexual euphemisms to be found here. It’s pure.

‘Polluted Sex’ is a story about an Irish girl, her English lover and her friend (who is also her lover). Raw in detail and language, it is fearless in depicting women, their sexuality and their bodies, in deeply realistic way.

Órla, the protagonist, is waiting for her period to start:

‘There’s a certain kind of sanctity surrounding your menstrual flow, a hangover of old ilk connecting you to the tides and their transgenerational fears of moons and banshees.’

First published in Polluted Sex, Influx Press, 2020. You can read it here

‘In Silhouette’ by Louise Kennedy

Louise Kennedy is the writer everyone wants to write like. I read her short stories first then devoured her novel, Trespasses, when it was published last year. Another Irish writer, Louise Kennedy came to writing late but absolutely flew once she started. She writes about love, marriage, sex, death and everything in between with dark wit and acute observations.

One of the most haunting stories in her debut collection is ‘In Silhouette’. Over a lifetime viewed in pieces, a sister hoards clippings and images relating to a soldier whom her late brother had helped abduct and kill. It stays with you.

First published in The End of the Road is a Cul-de-Sac, Bloomsbury 2020

‘Louise’ by Madeleine Bourdouxhe, translated by Faith Evans

Neglected for decades, interest in Belgian author Madeleine Bourdouxhe’s work has seen a resurgence and I’m delighted that A Nail, A Rose was reprinted in translation in 2019. I came across this collection in the original French, via something I read years ago by Simone de Beauvoir, and tried to translate it very badly. Written in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of France, and admired by the Existentialists and the Surrealists alike, these stories are unforgettable tales of ordinary women who burn with desire, suffer with loss, and live rich fantasy lives.

‘Louise’ is the first and possibly my favourite story in this astonishing collection. It focuses on the travails, rich inner world and fantasies of a woman who works as a maid in the day and at night wanders the streets, imagining her lover, dressed in a coat borrowed from her wealthy employer. It’s a story – and a collection – to treasure.

First published in English in The Atlantic, April 1954, and available to read here. Also available in A Nail, A Rose, Pushkin Collection, 2019

Introduction

This process was initially really jarring for me. Choosing your favorite, or most beloved, or absolute best short stories – I couldn’t even think of one! It’s like when you walk into a record store and you suddenly can’t name a band to save your life. I felt floored by this process for the first hour, but slowly, as I recontextualized and reimagined, things fell into place. These, rather than being the Top Brass of short stories, are the stories I relied upon to help convince me I wanted to continue writing. Without these stories, I would not likely be writing today, because they offered me an intangible level of mentorship and guidance that I was having trouble accessing in any other way.

‘Eleven’ by Sandra Cisneros

I write a lot about childhood. I think childhood, and being young, carries an immense sense of wonder, but it also carries its own tensions, ones often disregarded by adults. One of my favorite movies is Where Is The Friend’s House?, directed by Abbas Kiarostami. The entire film is about a boy who accidentally takes home his classmate’s homework, and he knows his friend is one strike away from failing, so he goes on a quest to return it. He seeks guidance from the adults in his life, but many of them blow him off, as they find his concerns frivolous, or are distracted, or are determined to make the boy do his chores. ‘Eleven’ is similar–when the teacher asks who a tacky, stinky red sweater belongs to, and another child claims it belongs to the protagonist, our main character is saddled with the anxiety and social burden of either speaking out or accepting the piece of clothing. She feels herself becoming smaller, younger, less able to clarify, and when she finally does, the teacher challenges her. “Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says, “I remember you wearing it once.” Mrs. Price being an adult settles the argument more than any reasoned logic would, and the main character shrinks even further. These are the compelling moments to me in these stories – these moments of anxiety, especially childhood anxiety, that seem so frivolous later, but so impactful and terrifying in the moment, especially when our elders are unhelpful or even damaging to the situation. This story, to me, is vital for any writer trying to examine or process their youth.

First published in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Random House 1991. Listen to Sandra Cisneros give a reading of this story here

‘Bebe’ by Louis Sachar

If you pressed me, I mean really laid it on me to choose a desert island book, I think it would be this one. A few years ago, Jia Tolentino described Sideways Stories as “lovely little lessons in craft, structured as neatly as a Rubik’s cube.” This book and these stories (which technically, are an interlinked novel, or a story cycle) are doing all of the things that I tried to learn and replicate in graduate school – and are doing it for elementary schoolers. The book is a nonlinear narrative, it’s absurdist, the characters are charming and dynamic, and the book is endlessly playful – you can tell Sachar enjoyed writing it. ‘Bebe’ is one of my favorites because it’s a hilarious meditation on art – Bebe is a student who cranks out drawing after drawing in art class, and her friend Calvin helps by sharpening her pencils and placing new sheets of paper in front of her, choosing to assist Bebe rather than make his own art, because she can create more that way than they’d be able to do alone. The teacher, Mrs. Jewls, confronts Calvin, asks why he hasn’t drawn anything, and questions if he likes art. “I love art,” said Calvin. “That’s why I didn’t draw anything.”

Mrs. Jewls tries to motivate Calvin, argues for quality over quantity, claiming that one really well done piece of art is better than a million pieces of mediocre art, and in the process, completely stifles Bebe’s own motivations, who abandons her process. Every story in this collection is charming, playful, and clever. It’s like Invisible Cities for kids, or for adults who feel like kids.

First published in Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1978)

‘Off Days’ by Shane Jones

For me, there isn’t a version of this list that doesn’t include Shane Jones. He’s been seminal to my work in ways large and small. I didn’t start writing until around the time this story was published, late 2015-ish. Although I wasn’t personally writing, I was at least somewhat familiar with contemporary literature, and was a fan of the variety and compelling charm of Jones’s novels. Around the time this story was published, I had also become a volunteer reader for the Adroit Journal, and I found that ‘Off Days’ unlocked something for me – it showed the possibilities existing in short and flash fiction. It’s the perfect blend of playful and heartbreaking. The dialogue in the story had a massive influence on my own work (much like the other stories Jones was publishing around this time).

“Geez,” says Ted during the car ride back home, “another off day.”

“You’ve been having a lot of those,” says Gina. “Maybe cut back on the soup.”

“No way,” says Ted. “The soup works.”

I am a huge lover of dialogue that is flippant, and of characters that are outwardly confident, even as they’re eroding. This story helped me navigate my attempts at telling serious stories in playful ways – that you don’t have to be doom and gloom in your process of exploring doom and gloom. ‘Off Days’ showcases a tongue-in-cheek, lovable approach to the passage of time, to the gentle corruption of our bodies and minds. There is a moment late in the story when Ted smashes open a dragon fruit with his cane, and cries upon seeing its insides, realizing he’s gone his entire life without having seen the inside of the fruit. I return to that moment frequently when writing. Where’s my dragon fruit? What will it release in me?

Originally published in The Adroit Journal, 2016. Read the story here

‘The Alive Sister’ by Megan Giddings

This is one of those stories that I show my students when we discuss what it means for art to be revolutionary. What does that even mean, they wonder, and I wonder too. How can art influence a discourse in a meaningful way? How can art challenge state violence? I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I show them ‘The Alive Sister’ and let it speak for itself. This story does so much in such a tight space – it spandrels, offers multiple versions of itself, references the writer’s role in the creation of the story, references the skeptical reader of the story (the skeptical reader, who, in my experience, inevitably exists – but also usually feels confounded that the story calls out their skepticism before/as they’re experiencing it). I am skeptical of empathy as a concept – I can never truly know what it means to be Black in the United States, or from any identity not my own. Art is a simulation of experience, one we willingly enter and exit at our own discretion. But I believe greatly in this story – in how it navigates tragedy, heartbreak, and anger, and tries to build a space where greater possibilities can exist.

Originally published in The Offing, 2016. Read the story here