‘All the People were Mean and Bad’ by Lucy Caldwell

Lucy Caldwell is a rising star of Irish literature and Intimacies is her second collection, following Multitudes (2016). The eleven stories in this collection are moving, quiet and full of empathy and compassion. Her stories aren’t about dramatic historical events or the seismic effects of war, peace or migration. Her focus in many of these stories is on the young mother, the bewilderment of being responsible for a new life and the compromises that need to be made as she suppresses her own individual dreams and needs. The language of her stories reflects the interior lives of her characters as they go about the mundane, dreary tasks of feeding, changing nappies and entertaining a child whose unending needs overwhelms them and leaves them gasping for air. As a mother, I could relate to the description of sleepless nights, the infantilazation of one’s brain and the dreary repetition of routine. In each of these stories, small children play a pivotal role in unhinging the mother, their primary caregiver. 

In ‘All the People Were Mean and Bad,’ which won the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award, a young mother flies home after the funeral of her female cousin in Canada. On the plane, a kind older man helps her to care for her toddler. They both strike a rapport and understanding in the surreal intimacy of an aeroplane cabin. The story reminded me of Sofia Coppola’s film, Lost in Translation, where the main protagonist has a fleeting glimpse of a different life she could have led. 

But the hollow feeling at your centre, the ache in your solar plexus, voids all hunger, and it feels somehow right to be at a light-headed remove from the world, this sense of being vague, and insubstantial, as if you could just drift on, indefinitely; as if you don’t really exist, or need to. Sometimes, you think, your daughter is the only person who feels real, because the immediacy of her needs is so urgently, incontrovertibly so.

First published in Intimacies, Faber, 2021. Also available in the BBC National Short Story Award 2021 anthology, Comma Press, 2021. Listen to the story here

‘The Middle Man’ by Bharati Mukherjee

‘The Middleman’ is told from the perspective of Alfie Judah, an Iraqi immigrant to the U.S. who is a “middleman” for illegal arms deals to rebel armies in an unnamed Latin American country. ‘The Middleman’ focuses on several themes common throughout Mukherjee’s fiction. Alfie is an immigrant with a tenuous U.S. citizenship who has become caught up in the shadier side of American imperialism. His lust for a drug lord’s mistress is in part an attraction to a fellow ‘alien’, although they are from two completely different cultures. Alfie is ultimately a character who survives in a multicultural setting in which he always finds himself as the “middleman” in business, political, and romantic conflicts.

Bharati Mukherjee was one of the first Indo-American writers to move away from the expected tropes of exoticising the East. There are no snake charmers or docile damsels in her narrative, instead what you find are flawed, complex characters determined to shed their past and assume a brand new American identity. The protagonists of these stories, like Alfie, are survivors. They are fleeing oppression, poverty, military coups and arranged marriages, determined to build a new life for themselves in an idealised version of America that they carry in their heads. The reality never quite matches their expectation and Mukherjee’s strength lies in the way she exposes the dark underbelly of extortion, violence, discrimination and exploitation that coexists with the shiny shopping malls and the happy-clappy Hollywood portrayal of American life. Mukherjee writes in a robust style without sentimentalizing the narrative. Her characters are not always likeable, but they are real and empowered in the choices they make. In this title story, Alfie recounts his escapades directly to the reader in the first person, and conveys the volatile excitement of the dreams ignited in him by what Mukherjee calls “the idea of America.”

First published in The Middleman and Other Stories, Little, Brown, 1990

‘La Madre’ by Natalia Ginzburg

‘La Madre’ or ‘The Mother’ by Natalia Ginzburg is written from the perspective of two young boys who watch their mother’s mysterious comings and goings and pine for her affection. It is a tragic social commentary of a rigid social code that denies the woman sexual or emotional independence. The ‘madre’ is no heroic figure, but an embittered thwarted woman who does not conform to the view maternal love is the only love permissible. She is an unloved mother with a yellow-powdered face who kills herself in a dingy hotel room when her exotic lover dumps her.

One day the boys see their mother at a café eating lunch with a strange man. We are not only told that they see her, we are later told that after an awkward confrontation with their mother about it, the boys decide this incident should be suppressed and not mentioned again.

They said nothing to Granny. In the morning while their mother was dressing the younger boy said: ‘Yesterday when we were out for a walk with Don Vigliani we saw you and there was a man with you.’ Their mother jerked round, looking nasty: the black fish on her forehead quivered and met. She said: ‘But it wasn’t me. What an idea. I’ve got to stay in the office till late in the evening, as you know. Obviously you made a mistake.’ The older boy then said, in a tired calm voice: ‘No it wasn’t you. It was someone who looked like you.’ And both boys realized that the memory must disappear: and they both breathed hard to blow it away.

What struck me whilst reading this story set in 1950s Italy and Lucy Caldwell’s work set in contemporary Ireland was, how little had changed in terms of the challenges facing a woman. 

The story first appeared a collection by Italian writers such as Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg and Francesca Duranti. The thirteen stories in the book highlight the different styles and preoccupations of these writers as they examine the status of women in post war Italy. I have read the stories in Italian, but there are critical notes in English and an extensive vocabulary.

First published in English in Italian Women Writing, ed. Sharon Wood, Manchester University Press, 1993. Also published in The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, ed. Jhumpa Lahiri, Penguin, 2021

‘Son’ by Yiyun Li

Narrated in the third person by an unnamed narrator, the central premise of this moving story is how immigrant young adults break away from the duties and expectations of their parents. Han, the thirty-three years old protagonist, is single and a recently naturalized American who visits his mother in Beijing. He has “a brand-new American passport and an old Chinese worry.” He is a “diamond bachelor” (Chinese-born U.S. citizen) who must tell his mother to stop looking for eligible girls to marry him as he is gay. 
 
Yiyun Li avoids self-consciously literary language and creates simple, pared-down prose to illustrate the disconnect between the mother and son. The story is also about religious dogma where the son is an atheist and his mother who has just converted to Christianity, has the fervour of the newly converted. Due to her newfound faith, the mother is insistent on converting her son as well, to which he responds more and more angrily as time goes on. While on the surface the son can be viewed as a stereotypical atheist, the story takes a deeper look behind what is fuelling his angry reaction towards his mother. Han points out that the so-called “catholic” church his mother attends is run by the government, which means that it is full of state propaganda. 
 
The story is told from the son’s perspective. It is his thoughts that the reader gets to know intimately, and his loving, but frustrated, feelings towards his elderly, widowed mother. His closeted state related to his sexuality makes sense in the context of growing up in the 1980´s China, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. He does not want to upset his mother who is enmeshed in the societal beliefs of this culture. 
 
The story whilst being light-hearted in tone, is nonetheless a powerful critique of communist China and its repressive measures and stranglehold over its citizens.
 
Yiyun Li’s debut collection won the Frank O’Connor International short story award and the Guardian First Book Award in 2006.

First published in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Harper Perennial, 2006

‘Disappearances’ by K J Orr

The story won the 2016 BBC National Short Story Award. It is a melancholic reflective story set in a Buenos Aires cafe. The narrator is a retired plastic surgeon with a distinguished career who one day feels compelled to visit a museum. His loneliness and lack of direction becomes apparent early on. 

What do you do when you stop? When you have been up and running for such a long time, what is it you do? When you’re used to a schedule that takes care of each second of the day? When there is no goal?

On finding the museum closed, he decides to have a coffee at a café in a nearby park where he notices the waitress. He is inexplicably drawn to her and begins to visit the cafe every morning. He is glad that his former career as a plastic surgeon is unknown to her. The story subtly alludes to the political disappearances in Argentina and the moral culpability of those who stood by and did not protest. 

I thrived. It didn’t matter who was in charge- throughout the decades, through all the ins and outs, the various shenanigans our country went through.

The story is an intricate play between the protagonist’s inner thoughts and the external world. Surprised by his own desire to create a new identity as a noble doctor helping the needy, and thus win over the waitress’s admiration, the surgeon’s identity is revealed when two rich society women who know him well visit the café and disrupt his newly invented persona. Caught off guard, the tension between the life he led and this desire to create a new identity forms a pivotal moment of the narrative. 

K J Orr writes in a nuanced, restrained style and the stories in this collection offer searing insights into the frailties of human nature. 

First published in Light Box, Daunt, 2016, and available to read here

‘Dance in America’ by Lorrie Moore

A brief dip into the life of a family who reside in ‘Pennsylvania Dutch country’, ‘Dance in America’ is the best example of what Moore does exquisitely – conveying how happiness and joy must exist amidst trouble and sorrow. The family’s young son has cystic fibrosis, and when the narrator, a dance teacher, spends the night at theirs whilst working in the area, she dances with him and his parents. She herself has her own troubles, having been recently left by her partner – a seething undercurrent to the evening. When they dance to a Kenny Loggins song, and Eugene, the son, runs out of breath, the narrator goes to sit with him before they get up and – fuck it – dance again.

As Eugene rallies the body given to him by fate, she says angrily:

I am thinking of the dancing body’s magnificent and ostentatious scorn. This how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking: we say with motion, in space. This is what life’s done so far down here – this is all and what and everything it’s managed – this body, these bodies, that body – so what do you think, Heaven? What do you fucking think?

The dance at the end of this story is one of my favourite moments in any story – I love seeing such joy and sympathy on the page. Moore reaches beyond the limits of domestic realism not through show-offy similes or wild allusions, but simply by showing both the beauty and anger in a quiet evening of people gathered together.

First published in The New Yorker, Jun 1993, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Birds of America, Knopf/Faber, 1998, and The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore, Knopf/Faber 2010

‘The Fliers of Gy’ by Ursula K. Le Guin

I could fill this list with Le Guin stories, but ‘The Fliers of Gy’, in Changing Planes, a later short story collection, is my favourite. So many of Le Guin’s stories have an anthropological lens; in ‘The Fliers of Gy’, the people observed by the visiting narrator ‘have plumage, not hair’, but she notes they are ‘staid, steady’ and ‘traditional’. Amongst them, shunned, misunderstood and yet occasionally revered, are the winged people, those who can grow fully-fledged wings on their backs and fly – analogues of anyone who is chosen by fate to stick out in their society and lead, irrevocably, a different life. 

Those with wings move between ecstasy at their ability and terror of it, especially because soaring above the earth is not without its perils – while you can sleep as you fly, you might also experience a wing breakdown, fall to earth and die. I’ve always loved this story because it’s about whether you answer the call of fate. If you choose not to, you avoid risk, danger and failure but you also lose the superpower of flying, the dreaming and the dizzy heights. And what does Le Guin think? She plays her cards close to her chest here, but seems to suggest the risk is worth it.

First published in Changing Planes, Harcourt, 2003/Gollancz, 2005, and collected in The Unreal and the Real, Gallery, 2016

‘Paradises Lost’ by Ursula K. Le Guin

‘Paradises Lost’ is one of the most compassionate and humane of Le Guin’s short stories, but if you’re snobby about sci-fi you’ll never see this because you won’t want to read about generation ships and interplanetary voyages. It’s a perfect example of how science fiction can be full of heart and expand one’s universe, whilst also being a great vehicle for asking questions about, in this case, our planet’s future. The children on this generation ship voyage only know Earth from virtual reality tapes – they have been on-board the ship their whole lives, heading towards a new habitable planet. But there’s a cult on the ship who don’t want to arrive at the new planet; they believe the journey itself is the purpose and want to cut off all connections to a terrestrial existence. For them, the voyage is life itself; life on Earth or other planets is a danger, or even illusory. This is just great plotting, and I wish someone would adapt it for television. There are conspiracies, propaganda, a love story, the question of what kind of home humans need and deserve – and just all-round brilliance. Put your genre snobbery aside and give it a try.

First published in The Birthday of the World, Harper Collins, 2002

‘The Beggar Maid’ by Alice Munro

Munro was the first writer I found who described romantic relationships with the accuracy I needed – she gave me words with which to understand my own experiences. I have found more writers like this since, thank god, but she remains far and away the best. If I ever do a PhD, it’ll be on her. In ‘The Beggar Maid’, Patrick, a young, handsome academic falls in love with Rose, the protagonist, who loves him back sometimes and at other times can’t stand him. Rose’s inner life and the dialogue feel so truthful, and it’s this which makes me always come back to Munro. She sees the complexities of relationships so clearly, and the intensity of her characters’ emotions is never misplaced. Everything feels absolutely real. She’s a genius and I think one of the best writers to read if you want to learn to write relationships properly. Give her the Nobel. Oh, wait.

First published in The New Yorker, June 1977, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Who Do You Think You Are, Macmillan, 1978, and also in No Love Lost, 2003 and Selected Stories Vol 1, Vintage, 1997/2021

‘Drinking Coffee Elsewhere’ by ZZ Packer

It was hard to pick one from this legendary collection – I shuffled between a few before settling, as I’d known I would, on the title story, ‘Drinking Coffee Elsewhere’. This must be one of the best college stories in existence; like I said about Munro, what gets me here is the emotional truth of it. Newly arrived at Yale, Dina says, “if I had to be any object, I guess I’d be a revolver,” an excellent comment from any narrator, which also wins her a year’s worth of psychiatric counselling. She becomes close to another student, and although the friendship ends badly, its growth and unravelling are brilliantly written. It’s been over twenty years since it came out and I still remember the scene of Dina spraying her friend with the squirt gun she uses as a dining hall dishwasher, and what Dina realises in that moment. I still love the image, too, of her friend Heidi soaked in water, in the canteen after hours, “turned over and over like a large beautiful dolphin, lolling about in the sun.”  

First published in The New Yorker, June 200, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, Riverhead/Canongate, 2003

‘At Hiruharama’ by Penelope Fitzgerald

I have in the past written at length about Fitzgerald, and called her “the greatest novelist of the 20th Century” (which I still stand by). She published her first novel at sixty-one, and wrote The Blue Flower, her masterpiece, when she was eighty. Her only book of short stories, The Means of Escape, was published in 2000, the year she died. ‘At Hiruharama’ is a perfect example of her greatness within just a few pages – she transports you to a different time and place; in this case New Zealand at the time of the first English settlers. 
 
The story is framed as a flashback, and the shifts in perspective – from Tanner, one half of the couple who have started a life in the remote New Zealand countryside, to their nearest neighbour, who comes the nine miles distance’ for dinner the night Tanner’s wife is giving birth – are just brilliant. Fitzgerald never wastes a word, and the world is built up detail by detail, like Tanner driving into town to buy rock salt and a sack of millet, and a book taking a year to arrive from England by post. If you’re looking for somewhere to start with Fitzgerald, I could recommend about four of her books, but if you only want a short story, then go for this.

First published in the anthology Infidelity, Chatto & Windus, 1993. Collected in New Writing 4, Vintage, 2004 and The Means of Escape, Flamingo, 2000. Listen to AS Byatt read it here

‘Baptizing’ by Alice Munro

In Munro’s first short story collection, Lives of Girls and Women, Del Jordan, wildly bright and stuck in rural Ontario, is trying to win a scholarship to college: “I got A’s at school,” she says, “I never had enough of them”. In one of the final stories, she falls for a boy, the excellently-named Garnet French, and it’s love at first sight. Munro’s version of love at first sight is far sexier than I’d have guessed before reading her; it is something to lose yourself in. At church, Del and Garnet’s hands touch and she is in ecstasy: “I felt angelic with gratitude, truly as if I had come out onto another level of existence.” This story of sexual awakening is perfectly done: “Sex seemed to me all surrender… not the woman’s to the man but the person’s to the body, an act of pure faith” – but of course it ends badly. There’s a bittersweet pain, facing the end of love and an uncertain future, but Del makes the best of it, understanding that what’s happened is part of growing up. She knows, as she says, that “real life awaits”. I can’t think of anyone who writes better than Munro about this transition from naïve adolescent to shrewd young woman.

First published in Lives of Girls and Women, 1971, Vintage

‘Paper Lantern’ by Stuart Dybek

ZZ Packer picked this story on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, and I listened to it on a long, windy walk. I stood in the street for its final few minutes rather than switch it off and knock on my friend’s door; I didn’t want to leave it (though also it doesn’t end how I’d want it to). It starts as a story of a bunch of scientists, working on a time machine – I’d forgotten this detail – and when they break for lunch, they go their favourite local Chinese restaurant. At some point the narrator takes us back in time to when he was having an affair with a woman, a long matryoshka doll flashback which ends with her trying to give him a blowjob while he’s driving and the car behind is furiously, inexplicably on their tail. Dybek’s themes are memory, what you can and can’t keep, and people you’ll never see again but still think about – but aside from all this, it’s just completely beautiful.

First published in The New Yorker, November 1995, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Paper Lantern: Love Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, and The Start of Something: Selected Stories, Simon & Schuster/Jonathan Cape, 2016. Listen to ZZ Packer read it here

‘Purim Night’ by Edith Pearlman

What’s so good about ‘Purim Night’ is that it’s such a sweet story, and yet it’s set in a dismal place – a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1947, populated by war refugees, concentration camp survivors, and former prisoners of war. One of the characters even recounts the deaths of her husband and best friend, her time in concentration camp, her “one rape and many beatings” – and yet I’d still call this story ‘sweet’. I think it’s partly because there’s a glimpse of a beautiful love story in it, an easy but miraculous love, and a surprise for the reader. 

It’s also because despite the fact the camp is impoverished and improvised, there’s an unusual sense of warmth in it. These people, celebrating Purim, have survived annihilation, and they are celebrating in the very land this was meant to happen in; their TB hospital was not so long ago a Wehrmacht stable. The ending is difficult; the woman who has lost her husband and best friend is fixated on going to Israel – there, she is sure, she will be saved. The sad naivety of this, her need for this hope, and the awful reality of such dreams today makes for a gruelling moment – which is, I’m sure, exactly what Pearlman intends. 

First published in Binocular Vision, Pushkin Press, 2014