‘Near the Driver’ by Alasdair Gray

It is possible that ‘Near the Driver’ is my favourite Alasdair Gray story simply because I heard him read it before it was published; it is therefore a story I hear in his voice. The central character is a “kind, intelligent old lady” not much used to modern trains who feels safer when she sits near the driver. Though the logic of this is soon disputed by a child in the same compartment, the feeling remains. As the passengers reminisce about the days of steam and argue about politics, the same child discovers that no-one is driving the train – it is being controlled by computer (a much less fanciful notion now, as are the pocket televisions mentioned in its 1999 setting). In many ways it is a typical science fiction warning, but one delivered with Gray’s typical erudition and humour, and always with an eye on the effects of ‘modernisation’ on ordinary people.

First published in Ten Tales Tall and True, Bloomsbury, 1993, and collected in Every Short Story, Canongate, 2012

‘The Elephant’ by Slawomir Mrożek, translated by Konrad Syrop

Slawomir Mrożek’s stories – or perhaps fables – are very short, and it is therefore difficult to pick a favourite, but ‘The Elephant’ is an excellent place to start. A satire of Communist Poland, it is just as easy to find its targets across the globe today. In the story the Director of a zoo, to save money and ingratiate himself with those above, refuses the funds to acquire an elephant and decides instead to make one much more cheaply out of rubber. The workers charged with inflating it quickly tire and have the ingenious idea of using a gas pipe to blow it up instead, with predictable consequences. My favourite detail, however, is the sign placed outside the elephant enclosure in preparation: “Particularly sluggish. Hardly moves.”

First published in Polish in 1958, and in English in The Elephant, MacDonald, 1962. Also available in Penguin Modern Classics, 2010

‘The Wireless Set’ by George Mackay Brown

Like most of George Mackay Brown’s work, ‘The Wireless Set’ is set on Orkney, and begins when the first wireless set arrives in 1939, presented by Howie to his mother. Howie tells her it speaks the truth; his father, old Hugh, is less convinced, citing an inaccurate weather report as evidence. When the war begins, the wireless is at first a source of news for the village, but after accidentally tuning into Lord Haw Haw they become fascinated by his lies. The story ends with news of Howie’s death and its final pages are among the most moving I have ever read.

First published in A Time to Keep, Hogarth Press, 1969, republished by Polygon in 2015

‘Senor Otaola, Natural Sciences’ by Medardo Fraile, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Senor Otaola is science teacher of scientific precision: his lessons begin and end on time, and his marks are undisputed. In fact, “knowing him, one could understand why the heavenly spheres do not bump into each other…” And yet one day he decides to jump from the top of a flight of twelve stairs, as if defying the laws of nature. Fraile’s story is one that demonstrates the power of the unlikely; the success or failure of Senor Otaola’s jump does not matter, only that it takes place. Fraile came to the UK in the 1960s and eventually settled in Scotland. His stories exist in the borderland between laughter and tears, but are always gentle. 

First published in Spanish as ‘Senor Otaola, ciencias’ in Descubridor de nada y otros cuentos, Editorial Prensa Española, 1970, and in English in Things Look Different in the Light, Pushkin Press, 2014

‘Light’ by Lesley Nneka Arimah

This tender and earnest story with a family of three at its core – a mother studying in America, the father and daughter left behind – sets up its premise in the first, forceful line: “When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters.” Arimah expertly navigates time and a young woman’s adolescence to talk about the love a father has for his daughter, a disintegrating marriage, how distance and the difference between where we live and where we want to live can change who we are and how we relate to each other.

First published online by Granta in April 2015 and available to read here Collected in What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, Riverhead Books, 2017

‘The Visitors’ by Anum Asi

With humour and sly asides about online dating, mothers, and visiting friends, this story slowly circles the grief a young woman feels over losing her sister. Even things that should be impossible (a dead sister talking from the lip of a carpet), seem plausible after Asi spends careful time building up details before confronting us with the otherworldly nature of her grief.

First published in Indiana Review, Winter 2019, Volume 41, Number 2

‘Butt and Bhatti’ by Mohammed Hanif

This may be cheating as I’m fairly sure this is a novel excerpt from Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, but it was published in Granta as a standalone story – so I’m going to pretend this is a short story. Nobody does humour, sarcasm, tenderness (and humour again) quite like Mohammed Hanif. This piece is about a city, a hospital, God (and the characters’ various levels of faith in Him), misogyny, the politics of courting. All of it feels electric, as if it has been waiting for Hanif to write it into existence. I also want to propose that Hanif is at his finest when writing about love and declarations of love in all their twisted manifestations.

First published in Granta 112: Pakistan, 2010 and available to subscribers to read online here

‘Control Negro’ by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

This story takes the topic of race in America and holds it up under floodlights. But under that runs a chorus of love and remembrance, of a father obsessively watching his son – setting their two lives side by side ­– and hoping that this time around it will be different: “I wanted to test my own beloved country: given the right conditions, could America extend her promise of Life and Liberty to me too, to someone like me?” I loved the structure Johnson chose for this piece. Having the father tell what happened back to the son gave it an energy I couldn’t look away from.

First published in Guernica, 2017, Collected in Best American Short Stories, 2018. Read online here

‘Half Woman’ by Khalida Hussain, translated from the Urdu by Haider Shahbaz

A woman wakes up one morning and finds that her right eye is not aligned with her left eye. Not much goes on to happen on the surface. In short simple sentences we follow the thought process of the woman as she tries to make sense of what may happened to cause the misalignment, but occasionally, and this happens so suddenly that I feel like I have been doused with cold water, the woman plunges towards what feels like the most truthful part of her consciousness before coming up again to the benign surface of her life. This is possibly the strangest, most mind boggling story I have read. A reminder of how many different ways there are for short stories to be.

This translation first published in Almost Island, 2020. Read online here

‘In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried’ by Amy Hempel

I read this story every day for an entire summer. I am not sure anymore what I was going through then but I am happy to report this story still makes me cry every time I read it. I love the first line: “Tell me things I won’t mind forgetting,” she said, “Make it useless stuff or skip it.” I had not realized what an elegy could do until I read this piece. Hempel builds the story’s momentum by painstakingly bringing seemingly disparate details together. I also credit this with teaching me how much can be contained within a paragraph break.

First published in TriQuarterly Magazine, 1983, included in the collection Reasons To Live, 1985, Harper Collins. Read it online here

‘Demonology’ by Rick Moody

Another elegy, this time by Rick Moody for his sister who passed away when she was 37. The paragraph breaks feel like jagged breaths the writer needs to take to recover as he recounts losing his sister. What a few pages contain; the life of a much loved sister in all its minuteness, her children, her jokes, her photography, the sudden shock of her death. There is the sense in this piece that that writer must get everything down on paper before he begins to forget the details of this moment. In the end, Moody acknowledges that he should ‘fictionalize this more,’ the insertion of himself into the text brings his grief even further to the forefront, we are sorry for his loss, we are sorry for all the people who have ever lost anyone they have ever loved.

First published in Conjunctions 26, 1996 Collected in Demonology, Faber, 2000 / Little Brown & Company, 2001

‘I Stand Here Ironing’ by Tillie Olsen

The first and last lines of this story are always like a punch to the gut. In fact, I think the first line here is the greatest first line of a short story I have ever read, or in the top five at least: “I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.” A mother recounts the life of her now (almost) adult eldest daughter and in the telling, Olsen paints the picture of an era, of single motherhood and all the attendant guilt, poverty and, of sibling dynamics. It’s incredibly moving, and a masterclass in how to write monologues.

First published in Tell Me a Riddle, Dell, 1961/Virago 1980

‘Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying’ by Alice Sola Kim

This is an extremely funny and extremely terrifying story about friendship and warped mother-daughter relationships. It also does strange things with POV; the difference in who we think is speaking and who is actually speaking keeps shifting. There are many lessons of craft here, but actually every time I read this story, I am just in complete and total awe of Alice Sola Kim’s imagination.

First published by Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales, 2014, Republished by Tin House, 2018. Read online here