Category: Amanthi Harris

Amanthi Harris grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka and in London, UK. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novel Beautiful Place was published by Salt Publishing (UK) and Pan Macmillan India. Lantern Evening, a novella, won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and was published by Gatehouse Press. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines and anthologies including Best British Short Stories 2020. She currently lives in the mountains of southern Spain. www.amanthiharris.com

Introduction

In this selection I have focused on some of my favourite short story collections and have tried to highlight the stories I like best within each collection. These are the stories I keep returning to, always finding something new in each reading.

I love short stories, and I particularly love long short stories that boldly take up space with large casts of characters, and/or numbered sections that unfold like small chapters. I love how a story can be big and long and still slowly circle in around a tiny potent moment, or stay with a conversation, or illuminate a character’s silent solitary thoughts in tight-woven poetic language, with no excess.

‘Prelude’ by Katherine Mansfield

One of the first short stories I remember reading was Prelude by Katherine Mansfield. I read it first in the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, the first book I bought at Shakespeare and Co. in Paris in 1995! I remember the excitement of reading Katherine Mansfield for the first time, and the feeling of absolute immersion in the world of the Burnell children, as Kezia and Lotty are left behind with neighbours as the family move house.

I was immediately seduced by the voices, the silent observations of characters, the way they moved through houses and gardens and lingered in rooms:

“As she stood there, the day flickered out and dark came. With the dark crept the wind snuffling and howling. The windows of the empty house shook, a creaking came from the walls and floors, a piece of loose iron on the roof banged forlornly. Kezia was suddenly quite, quite still, with wide open eyes and knees pressed together. She was frightened.”

…and the careful descriptions of the objects inside:

“A little piano stood against the wall with yellow pleated silk let into the carved front. Above it hung an oil painting by Beryl of a large cluster of surprised-looking clematis. Each flower was the size of a small saucer, with a centre like an astonished eye fringed in black.”

Soon we are with the rest of the household in their new home, following their movements and interactions, and observing the many small private moments in the day that make up a whole life.

First published by the Hogarth Press in July 1918; collected in Bliss and Other Stories, 1920. Available to read online here

‘At The Bay’ by Katherine Mansfield

In the story ‘At the Bay’, Katherine Mansfield continues her observations of the Burnell family, and also their cousins, friends, servants, all in a single perfect summer’s day. So much is captured in the colours and glimpses of life by the sea, the new people they meet, the conversations that conceal dangers beneath their sunlit surface. Even the most placid conversations and languid friendly encounters hold a power to corrupt the idyll.

“That’s right, breathed the voice, and it teased, You’re not frightened, are you?… She was terrified, and it seemed to her everything was different. The moonlight stared and glittered; the shadows were like bars of iron. Her hand was taken.”

First published in The London Mercury in January 1922, Collected in The Garden Party and Other Stories, 1922. Available to read online here

‘When She is Old and I am Famous’ by Julie Orringer

Every single story in How To Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer is unique and moving and wonderful. I have chosen ‘When She is Old and I am Famous’ mainly because it is also very funny. With just the right note of derision, Orringer captures the rivalry between two teenaged cousins as the protagonist Mira is forced to spend her summer in Florence with her cousin Aida, a fashion model.

“Aida. That is her terrible name. Ai-ee-duh: two cries of pain and one of stupidity.”

As Mira navigates her insecurities, wrestling with her envy and resentment of her cousin, she glimpses truths about Aida’s life and learns to understand her.

First published in The Paris Review 149, Winter 1998, and available to subscribers to read online here; Collected in How To Breathe Underwater, Penguin Books, 2003

‘The Woman Who Borrowed Memories’ by Tove Jansson, translated by Silvester Mazzarella

In her precise, pared-down prose, the calm, clear gaze of Tove Jansson observes the return of successful painter Stella to her old studio where her friend Wanda has been living for many years. It is soon clear that Wanda has claimed Stella’s past and identity for her own, and an unnerving struggle between the two women ensues. An eerie story of friendship and envy.

First published in Swedish in Resa med lätt baggage, 1987. First published in English in Travelling Light, Sort of Books, 2010; also in The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories, NYRB Books, 2014

‘Captives’ by Romesh Gunesekera

In Captives by Romesh Gunesekera a couple arrive at a hotel near the ancient fortress of Sigiriya Rock in Sri Lanka and are closely observed by the manager. This is a story of misreadings and the divide between tourists and locals; the tensions between old colonial power and the once colonised.

First published in Monkfish Moon, Granta, 1992

‘Ranvali’ by Romesh Gunesekera

‘Ranvali’ by Romesh Gunesekera is a story that captures, in lush detailed prose the romance of the rural landscape and old dilapidated country houses in Sri Lanka. A daughter is driving down to her late-father’s beach bungalow and reflects on his misplaced idealism and efforts to create a more unified country, giving away his valuable land for strangers to gather in, a project doomed to fail.

“For father the gama was his precious link to the peasants, his masses, even though they treated him like a lord. They brought him pineapple and jak fruit, plantains, jaggery and curd while he sat on the veranda… looking more like Tolstoy than his Lenin.”

First published in Monkfish Moon, Granta, 1992

‘Once In A Lifetime’, ‘Year’s End’ and ‘Going Ashore’ by Jhumpa Lahiri

The next three stories are a trio of linked stories by Jhumpa Lahiri about Hema and Kaushik, two children of migrants to the US who first meet as their parents settle into new lives, then meet again many years later.

In quiet elegant prose Lahiri captures the growing years of Hema and Kaushik, following them as their families set up home in a new country, navigate sickness and prosper rootless in new land. The stories capture the trials of the death of a parent, a father’s remarriage; step-siblings; travel alone to Europe. When Hema and Kaushik meet by chance they both experience a sense of connection.

“She still remembered her first impression of him, a quiet teenager in a jacket and tie, refusing her mother’s food. She remembered the ridiculous attraction she had felt that night, when she was thirteen years old and that she had secretly nurtured during the weeks they lived together. It was as if no time had passed.”

‘Once In A Lifetime’ and ‘Year’s End’ first published in The New Yorker, and available to subscribers to read here and here. All three stories collected in Unaccustomed Earth, Bloomsbury 2008

‘Chance’, ‘Soon’ and ‘Silence’ by Alice Munro

The following are three linked stories by Alice Munro, about the life of Juliette, an intelligent successful woman and mother. In the story ‘Chance’, Juliette is a young post-graduate student travelling by bus and ferry to meet Eric, a man she had previously met on a train following the suicide of another passenger. In ‘Soon’, we see Juliette, now a young mother, of Penelope, returning to visit her parents and feeling out of place in their home, back in the small town of her childhood. She is soon reminded of the old-fashioned prejudice and hostility of neighbours that she experienced as an ambitious clever young woman, and how it has affected, and been accommodated by, her parents. In ‘Silence’, Juliette, is middle-aged and waiting for the return of an adult Penelope from a spiritual retreat, while it becomes increasingly clear that Penelope may never return to her.

“My father used to say of someone he disliked, that he had no use for that person. Couldn’t those words mean simply what they say? Penelope does not have a use for me. Maybe she can’t stand me. It’s possible.”

Juliette, in ‘Silence’, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, (especially since the real-life revelations of Alice Munro’s daughter in recent years) and possibly there is much that has been held back by Munro in these stories. Yet there is still a cautious careful exploration of the shame and damage suffered by women who go on to damage their daughters in turn. The three stories of Juliette show a whole life in glimpses: the moments of bad choices and irredeemable mistakes and the uneasy resignation of old age.

‘Chance’, ‘Soon’ and ‘Silence’ all first published in The New Yorker, and available to subscribers to read here, here and here. All three collected in Runaway, Vintage, 2005, and then in New Selected Stories, 2011 and Lying under the Apple Tree, 2014