‘Trial’ by Jonathan Taylor

Much of Jonathan’s work is concerned with neurology and memory, and this short story is no exception.

With its slight nod to Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, this story is structured as a series of diary entries charting the progress of a patient in a scientific trial. Narrated from the patient’s partner’s point of view, we learn of his undiagnosed neurological disorder, one that has left him unable to recognise faces. The narrative is both compelling and devastating. You said, Doc, it’s all because of a damaged “dorsal pathway” to the facial processor. You said the damage might be caused by Lewybodies, the L-Dopa he takes, or it might even be the ECT he had as a boy. You said these things move, so to speak, in mysterious ways – more things in heaven and earth, et cetera et cetera. You showed me the MRI scan, and I said I didn’t understand.Taylor masterfully flits between the empathy and the distress and often the outright frustration of the narrator, then leaves us bereft, with a delicately dark twist of an ending.

First published in Lunate Literary Magazine, April 2020, here.You can also find links to Jonathan’s work here

‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor

Really, one of the first stories that rattled my bones, with its languorous tone, incongruous against the abject violence within. This story sparked an exploration of Sothern gothic literature and inspired my own MA dissertation. Flannery O’Connor’s short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ is a wonderful example of how Southern Gothic can contain both dark humour and a bleak and shocking theme.

A prisoner, ‘the Misfit’, has escaped from the ‘federal pen’. An unbearable Grandmother, exposed by O’Connor as a hypocrite, racist and religious zealot, sets off with her family to visit relatives in Tennessee. She insists on a diversion to an old plantation house, leading the family straight into the path of the misfit and his gang. What transpires is utterly horrific, yet due to O’Connor’s skilful storytelling, we ultimately find sympathy for the anti-hero.

First published in The Berkeley Book of Modern Writers, ed. William Phillips and Phillip Rahv, in 1953. You can read this, and other stories here

‘Drag’ by Leone Ross

When I was struggling to write sex scenes for my novel, I put a call out on Twitter for help. A huge collective of voices pointed me toward Leone Ross and her sultry seductive writing. I read her collection Come Let Us Sing Anyway and found it utterly bewitching. ‘Drag’ stood out for me with its lyrical, erotic prose and its feisty protagonist, Josephine, who strives to find her own identity through a series of sexual encounters. She is first a drag queen, relinquishing her femininity, then an executive, surrendering her power and finally a bride-to-be, who realises that SHE is all she needs. Rich in sensuous detail and utterly seductive prose, this story is a masterclass in erotic writing.

First published in Brown Sugar: A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction, ed. Carol Taylor, Dutton Plume, 2001. Collected in Come Let Us Sing Anyway, Peepal Tree Press, 2017. An excerpt of the story was printed in Cosmopolitan magazine, September 2018, and can be read here

‘Shy Bairns get Nowt’ by Chris McCrudden

This anthology has some wonderful essays and short stories, but McCrudden’s story resonated with me because I grew up in the north-east and instantly recognised his grandmothers, both of whom sit firmly on either side of the hierarchal fence that runs directly through the centre of a north-east council estate. McCrudden’s incredibly wry, yet often poignant memoir exposes the aspirations and complexities of working-class families, almost as if he had held up a mirror of my own experiences. Littered with humour, ‘Shy Bairns get Nowt’ is a brilliant introduction to his writing.

First published in Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers, ed. Kit de Waal, Unbound, 2019

‘The Thing Between Your Legs’ by Gaynor Jones

As an avid flash reader, and a flash writer myself, it would be remiss of me not to choose a very short story to add to the list. The flash community is a wonderful place if you’re looking to read tiny, powerful stories that challenge you. This one, from Gaynor Jones, demonstrates how even the shortest of stories can leave the reader reeling.

‘The Thing Between Your Legs’ traverses the awkward curiosity of a young girl and her body and the muted discussions and barriered response from a reserved and puritan mother. Jones’s style is wry and witty with the occasional knock to the head that makes the reader see stars. Mother kept her legs crossed – always at the ankle, never at the knee. But there were six of us, plus the dead baby, so we knew she had opened them up plenty.The Thing Between Your Legs went on to win the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award, and it’s not difficult to see why.

First Published in Bending Genres, April 2018. You can read it here

‘Not Contagious’ by Haleh Agar

Highly commended by the in the Costa Book Awards and later published in the London Magazine, I loved this deeply layered short story with its unusual subject matter and themes of loneliness, grief and inherent racism. Haleh is a skilled storyteller, and on each reading of ‘Not Contagious’ I seem to find something new, a fine detail that breaks my heart even more. Her wonderful debut novel Out of Touch is out now.

Published in The London Magazine, March 2020. You can read it here

‘The Lonely Londoners’ by Sam Selvon

Technically this is a novella not a short story, but it can probably be read in one sitting, so I’m compelled to slot it into this anthology. With its lively creole dialogue and comedic scenes contrasting beautifully with the powerful and heart-breaking pathos of the narrator, Moses, The Lonely Londoners is a masterpiece in contemporary writing. Selvon’s novella depicts the plight of West Indian immigrants who travel to post-war London in search of a better life, only to be disappointed by the reality of a cruel welcome to the ‘promised land’.

First published in 1956 by Longman’s Press. Currently available as a Penguin Modern Classic, 2006

‘Let it Cry’ by David Court

I’m not usually a fan of the macabre, being somewhat of a wimp, but this short story by David Court pulled me in entirely. Nestled within his short story collection Scenes of Mild Peril, this is a plague story, set in Dublin, with elements of folk tale eeriness and compounded by a breath-taking finale. Given the current climate of a global pandemic, it resonates even further with the reader.

First published April 2016 at Stitched Smile Publications here. You can find out more about David’s work here

‘Corvidae’ by Elisabeth Ingram Wallace

This Mogford Prize-winning story is set in the Scottish Highlands and focuses on Esme, a local woman who lives a solitary life, punctuated only by passing hipster tourists, who fill her ‘honesty box’ with coins in return for her home-made wares. Ingram is the mistress of foreshadowing when, in the opening paragraph, we learn:The crows don’t eat the nuts when they get crushed, instead they wait for a squirrel gathering up chestnuts to get hit by a car, and eat them instead.This stunning short story subverts the idea of the hunt in the cleverest of ways and its vivid detail and sardonic voice make it an absolute joy to read.

Published by The Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing, 2019, you can read it online here

‘Eveline’ by James Joyce

Scholars of Joyce might discuss, at length, his contribution to modernist literature, his imitable narrative style and uncompromising prose, but I chose ‘Eveline’ simply because it was the first short story that ever made me cry.

Eveline is nineteen and faced with the dilemma of eloping to Buenos Aires with her lover Frank, or remaining in Dublin, working in The Stores and taking care of her abusive father. Joyce examines the danger of sentimental reminiscence. When Eveline hears a street organ playing, she is reminded of a promise to her mother, “to keep the home together as long as she could” followed by a swift bout of panic that her life will be as pitiful as her mothers: “Escape! She must escape!”

We are hopeful for Eveline until the last moments, when her fear of what she truly desires becomes too much to bear and instead she commits her to a lifetime of drudgery. Eveline is left “gripping both hands to the iron railings” on the dock, whilst Frank is swept away in the crowds.

Joyce’s stories are buoyed by his imitable attention to detail and his incredible capacity to inject poignancy and self-reflection into his uncompromising social commentaries on Dublin.

First published in Irish Homestead, 2014. Collected in Dubliners, Grant Richards, 1914

Introduction

Short stories are like literary fireworks, dazzling and short-lived, they are precisely conceived explosions. Every word counts. The Chinese invented fireworks, and rather like the Miscellany texts of Li Shang-Yin, they produce dosed light. Historically fireworks were designed to enchant their subjects and illuminate castles. However, the field of pyrotechnics, like that of the short story, is far from fulfilled. Like the mystery of how to produce forest green fireworks, there are many short stories that are yet to be invented….

This Personal Anthology is a voyage, a wandering back in time through skies lit by short stories, pyrotechnic texts I’ve been reading and illuminated by since I was a little girl.

‘Spit Nolan’ by Bill Naughton

The story ‘Spit Nolan’ comes from a dog-eared, Puffin collection, ‘The Goalkeeper’s Revenge and other stories’ by Bill Naughton, that I’ve had since I was eight. This collection of deftly crafted stories combines a Northern English Maupassant vibe with a lyrical touch of Laurie Lee, unsentimentally and humorously depicting boys playing, fighting, living and dying, characters like Skinny Nancy and Waldo the lion-tamer. Amongst tales about eating seventeen oranges and a mam obsessed by reading and writing, is ‘Spit Nolan’, a story about a thin, lad with one lung who is a champion trolley-rider, and the sacred day he rides his final race.

From The Goalkeeper’s Revenge and Other Stories, Harrap, 1961

‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams’ by Sylvia Plath

‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams’ is a delirious short story, about the nine to five job of “a dream connoisseur. Not a dream-stopper, a dream-explainer… but an unsordid collector of dreams,” a rogue secretary, who devotes her spare-time “to none other than Johnny Panic himself.” Set in a psychiatric clinic, this darkly comic, oneiric and well-pitched tale, delves into the secretary’s dream records, her capture by the Clinic director and concludes with a terrible finale, featuring Johnny Panic himself, “the air crackling with his blue-tongued lightning-haloed angels.”

Written 1958; first published posthumously in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, Faber and Faber, 1977

‘Mandra’ by Anais Nin

I am including Nin’s erotic collection, as when Fifty Shades of Grey hit the world, supposedly revolutionizing literary female sexuality, many of us said, “Why the hell weren’t people reading the more exquisite, sensual words of Anais Nin?” ‘Mandra’, set in New York, where “the illuminated skyscrapers shine like Christmas trees” is the story of Mandra and her erotic adventures with Mary and Myriam, with and without their clothes on.

Written in the 1940s. First formally published posthumously, in Little Birds, Harcourt Brace, 1979. Now available as a Penguin Modern Classic