‘Professor2’ by Szilvia Molnar

God, I love this story. It’s everything I long for in a very short story – heart, cleverness and that killer ending. But it’s mostly for the craft I appreciate it. The use of anaphora feels like a prayer, once once once, and then the almost but oh so not quite repetition in the last sentence. And now this review is nearly as long as the original piece. 

First published in twoseriousladies.org

‘Get Gone’ by Tania Hershman

Choosing these stories has made me realise how much I value writing that is crafted to such a high level that the reader doesn’t realise the tricks involved. That’s what happened with this story for me. I read it, appreciating the power and language before I realised that every sentence began with the same letter, G. Clever. And the g-g-g-g sounds give it a roughness too. Pure poetry. 

First published in Reflex Fiction, June 2020

‘SIGH’, by Michael Martone

Or as it’s subtitled, EXCERPT FROM THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF ART SMITH, THE BIRD BOY OF FORT WAYNE, INDIANA. This is a beautiful act of flight, and childhood dreaming. Art Smith, born in 1926 was one of the pioneers of skywriting – it’s amazing what you learn from fiction, or do you? I’m still wondering if even the Wikipedia entry isn’t a clever part of the story. I wouldn’t put it past Michael Martone. 

First published in Split Lip Magazine

‘This is How You Fail to Ghost Him’ by Victoria McCurdy

I feel this story should be put into a time capsule for folk in the future to find and – hopefully – feel lucky that times have moved on. Victoria McCurdy captures the longing behind any new relationship so perfectly that it sings off the page and, having said it’s contemporary, actually the theme about relationships is probably universal. Perhaps this is what cave drawings were all about. 

First published in Monkeybicycle, November 2017

‘Hello, My Name Is Marley’ by K.B. Carle

K B Carle is a genius at the hermit crab narrative – using a different form to tell a story. I’ve been following her with admiration for several years now, and this one is perfection – a story in the form of a word search. I’m excited about this kind of originality but like all the stories here, it wouldn’t work if the form didn’t perfectly fit and add another layer to the theme. 

First published in Craft

Introduction to a Seasonal Personal Anthology

My selection of short stories follows the seasons, month by month. I imagined them as a collection to read slowly as the year unfolds. I had a brilliant time gathering my favourites and reminding myself of the great sentences, as well as scenes that symbolised the rhythms of the natural world: Katherine Mansfield’s pear tree in spring, Shirley Jackson’s dark, unfriendly streets of New York giving an eerie autumn atmosphere. 

There’s so much I love about all these stories, not only the way they allow me to mark each month of the year. They each depict the inner lives of women, show the ways we can’t always express how we feel, and have an element of ghosts, hauntings or the surreal. Perfect!

‘Mother’ by Grace Paley

A story for January
 
I could have chosen any number of Grace Paley stories, but I’ve selected ‘Mother’ to kick off my list as it’s set on New Year’s Day and the tone of reflection we often have as the year turns. A writer, teacher and peace activist, Paley’s stories are filled with people, vivid scenes, and city life. Her work has a bright, fast energy. ⁠
 
‘Mother’ has a typically distinctive voice from the start (“I have often longed to see my mother in the doorway”) and humour (“She said sadly, If you come home at 4 a.m. when you’re seventeen, what time will you come home when you’re twenty?”), with a sense of the past haunting the present (“They sat in comfortable leather chairs. They were listening to Mozart. They looked at one another amazed. It seemed to them that they’d just come over on the boat.”) 

First published in Later The Same Day, FSG, 1985; included in Sudden Fiction, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas, Peregrine Smith, 1986 and available to read online here

‘I Stand Here Ironing’ by Tillie Olsen

A story for February
 
A love story of sorts, for Valentine’s Day. “I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.” I often think about this story of a mother reflecting on her teenage daughter’s life in response to concerns from a teacher. How the ‘back and forth’ motion of the iron is echoed in the shape of the piece, with memories, arguments and regrets rising and falling. (“Running out to that huge school where…she was lost, she was a drop,” then “She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you concerned? She will find her way.”) How it opens and deepens with lines taking in this family and other families across Depression-era America. How it ends without resolution but instead, like ironing and other domestic tasks, concluded for now, until the next day when it will be done all over again. 

First published in Tell Me a Riddle, Dell, 1961/Virago 1980, and available to read online here

‘In The Middle of The Fields’ by Mary Lavin

A story for March
 
‘In the Middle of the Fields’ is about a woman mourning her husband, feeling drawn to the past. This is reflected in the time of year it takes place. It looks both to the cool of winter and the warmth of the future: although set in spring, “there was a cutting east wind coming across the river.” 
 
Much is underneath the surface of this story, in which a neighbouring farmer shares with the woman the story of his own lost wife and a new wife, too. Mary Lavin’s stories are subtle. Populated by determined women in rural Ireland, trying to live on their own terms, alongside the loneliness and the judgements of others. She shows us how the quiet, intimate overlooked details of life can be tremendously important. 

First published in The New Yorker, May 1961, and available to subscribers to read here; collected in In the Middle of the Fields, 1967. Most recently published by New Island Books, 2016. Here it read by Colm Toíbín on the New Yorker fiction podcast here

‘Agnes of Iowa’ by Lorrie Moore

A story for April
 
I was a short story reader before I was a writer and the first writer I fell in love with was Lorrie Moore. Her wry, ironic, conversational voice. Those puns and quips! The way her characters stumble through life. Her stories made me want to write my own, about the ways people I knew lived their lives.
 
‘Agnes of Iowa’ is about a quiet teacher who once lived in New York and now is in the Midwest. Her husband (“he smelled sweet, of soap and minty teeth, like a child”) is a little disappointing, so her sudden attraction to a visiting poet one April shocks and delights her. That month is “cool and humid. Bulbs cracked and sprouted, shot up their green periscopes.” There’s a lovely sense of something shifting in her life, when she would “wait for the moment, then seize it.”

From Birds of America, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1988. Available to read online on the Granta website

‘Bliss’ by Katherine Mansfield

A story for May

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at–nothing–at nothing, simply.

The pure joy captured here in the beginning, and throughout the piece, is spellbinding, especially as later it’s replaced with a darker set of feelings.
 
At the heart of the story is “a tall, slender pear tree in fullest, richest bloom; it stood perfect, as though becalmed against the jade-green sky.”  I love short stories that take an image and hold it up to the light, show it from different angles, and allow it to take on different meanings as the narrative progresses. The tree is initially a symbol of the springtime’s abundance, then of youth, of hidden desires, and finally of loss and the passage of time.

First published in the English Review (1918), now in Selected Stories, Oxford World’s Classics, 2002, and other Mansfield collections, available online here

‘Note to Sixth-Grade Self’ by Julie Orringer

A story for June
 
This whole collection by Julie Orringer is wonderful. Nine stories of people learning to navigate life, loss and relationships, learning how to breathe underwater. ⁠ All the stories explore the moments of transition between childhood and adulthood, family and independence.
 
In Note to Sixth-Grade Self, the weather is warm and the sky is bright. It opens with: “On Wednesdays wear a skirt. A skirt is better for dancing.” The tone is hopeful but we soon realise the narrator writes to a younger version of herself, guiding her through her very painful pre-teen years. Cruel girls tease her in their ballroom dancing class, they bully her in and out of school. But there’s a final, redemptive scene in which her understanding of people, her hopefulness, is rewarded. The story is mesmerising, and tender. Very wise, very beautiful.⁠

Published in the Paris Review, Winter, 2000, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in How to Breathe Underwater, Knopf, 2003, which is now available as a Vintage Contemporary, 2005