‘Shirley from a Small Place’ by Alexia Arthurs

Arthurs writes in a beautifully unpretentious manner that weaves in shrewd social observations with great emotional acuity. The Shirley in this story is obviously based on Rihanna, and I love the chutzpah and sheer sense of fun in that! From the obvious Rihanna references (who doesn’t love Rihanna?) to its incredibly “literary” title, this story is both a hoot and technically impressive. With such a premise it might easily have veered toward yet another commentary about celebrity culture that perpetuates the vapidity, excess and so-whatness it critiques – but what you get instead is a moving study of the complex, tensile currents of feeling between mothers and daughters.

First published in Granta 143, July 2019 and available online here. Collected in How to Love a Jamaican, Picador, 2018

‘Something That Needs Nothing’/ Making Love in 2003’ by Miranda July

“In an ideal world, we would have been orphans.” Two sad, strange and brilliant stories about eviscerating loneliness. One involves a stripper in an itchy wig, hopelessly in love with her callous best friend; the other, intensely and almost defiantly twee and weird, involves an intergalactic dark blob that deflowers the narrator. July writes with a mordant directness that conveys great emotional depth and complexity.

First published in The New Yorker, September 2006 and available online here. Collected in No one belongs here more than you, Canongate, 2007

‘Mr Wu’/ ‘Bettering Myself’ by Ottessa Moshfegh

I first encountered these stories in The Paris Review and what a fitting introduction to the id-driven, shame-fuelled, funny and disgusting world that Moshfegh creates. My Year of Rest and Relaxation was my favourite book of last year and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

‘Mr Wu’ first published as ‘Disgust’ in The Paris Review 202, 2012. ‘Bettering Myself’ first published in The Paris Review 204, 2013. Collected in Homesick for Another World, Jonathan Cape, 2017

‘Vampires in the Lemon Grove’/’The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutiss’ by Karen Russell

Russell has been writing horror-infused feminist literary fiction for years, way ahead of the current curve. ‘Vampires’ showcases her humour and tremendous, elastic imagination, using conditional immortality as a metaphor for long-term relationships. ‘Eric Mutiss’ has the verve and energy of a campfire story, but is haunted by melancholy. It’s a story about how cruel and rejecting we can be to each other.

‘Vampires’ first published in American Zoetrope: All Story, 2007. ‘Graveless Doll’ first published in Conjunctions 55, Fall 2010 and available as audio here. Both collected in Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Chatto & Windus, 2013

‘Would Like To Meet’ by May-Lan Tan

This story ends unforgettably with a ring tone of Lou Reed singing ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ closing the book on a literal note of melancholy optimism. It’s one of the quieter, gentler stories in a brashly and unabashedly brilliant and original collection, charged with so much honesty and feeling that it lingers for years.

First published in Things to Make and Break, CB Editions, 2014. New edition from Sceptre, 2018

‘Orchid’ by Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is one of the best writers alive today and way ahead of her time. I have no doubt if she were a man she’d be as venerated as Philip Roth or Don Delillo. She’s best known for ‘Secretary’ and Bad Behaviour, and she writes about sexual and emotional politics with a bruise-eyed, wary incisiveness like no other. She’s sharp, but tender-hearted. This story stands out because it’s about a not-quite sexual, not-quite romantic relationship between a queer woman and a once-beautiful boy. The scenes between them glow and ache with unspoken regrets and inchoate longing – not for each other, but for the promise of past selves.

First published in Because They Wanted To, Simon & Schuster, 1997

Introduction

As a child in the 60s I was introduced to short fiction via Listen With Mother. Many of the books I went on to read – the Milly Molly Mandy stories, the William books by Richmal Crompton were essentially short story collections. But as an adult I thought it was time to put away childish things. Grown-ups read novels. 

Yet short stories have always caught my imagination in a way that longer fiction can’t do. There’s something dreamlike and haunting about this genre. Here I’ve chosen some examples that may not necessarily be ‘the best’. They are simply the ones which have never gone away.

‘A Simple Heart’ by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Robert Baldick

I encountered this one as a student, and thought there was something enjoyably grotesque about the story of Felicité’s attachment to her parrot. Years later I find the piece quite different. It now seems to be about the situation of a woman who loves, but is never loved back. Is she ‘simple’ in the negative sense of the word? Or does the faith she places in others – and in her bird Loulou – fill her life with meaning?

First published 1877 as ‘Un Coeur Simple’. Translation in Three Tales, Penguin Books, 1961. Available online in various translations including here

‘The Dead’ by James Joyce

This story could be used in support of the argument that ‘Less is More’. I’ve read both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Yet, with the possible exception of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, all those thousands of words have left remarkably little trace. Here Joyce evokes a Dublin party in which small and large divisions between the guests become apparent as the evening progresses. But there’s an unexpected – and wonderful – shift at the end, when the main character realises what everybody holds in common. In time all of them will be welcomed by very different hosts.

First published in Dubliners, Grant Richards, 1914. Available online including here

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

Sylvia Plath’s work seems to attract those who interpret her poems and prose solely in terms of what they might reveal about her troubled life. She is rarely thought of as comedic. But  what I like about ‘Johnny Panic’ is its edgy noir humour. The narrator – like all good authors? – is a collector of stories. She believes the fantastical dreams she transcribes in her hospital job are as true as any daytime narrative. In dreams Johnny Panic may speak freely.Well, from where I sit, I figure the world is run by one thing and this one thing only. Panic with a dog-face, devil-face, hag-face, whore-face, panic in capital letters with no face at al. It’s the same Johnny Panic, awake or asleep.But unfortunately the heroine’s determination to consult the work of her predecessors lands her in a risky situation.

First published in Atlantic Monthly, 1968. Collected in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose Writing, Faber, 1977. Available online here

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Though I’m not a fan of horror films my literary tastes are decidedly Gothic – perhaps because it’s form in which issues of sexual equality are readily explored. In ‘The Dead’ caring spouse Gabriel Conroy made his wife wear galoshes for her health. But in this tale husbandly solicitude takes a darker turn. As the narrative progresses both the heroine and those who – supposedly – look after her become increasingly hard to trust. The mysterious wallpaper in the room where she is sent to rest plays an increasingly important role…

First published in The New England Magazine, January 1892. Widely collected and published, including as a £1 Penguin Little Black Classic. Available online here

‘At the Bay’ by Katherine Mansfield

Another story which has changed since I read it as a young woman. I still admire the deftness with which Mansfield shows us the interior lives of a family group on holiday. But what I recalled is lightness, sunshine, her awareness of the preoccupations of children. Now there appear to be a number of shadowy narrative strands, some trouble in Paradise. If the Bay is Eden, then it is one that is more idyllic once Adam has gone away.(“Oh the relief, the difference it made to have the man out of the house.”) And in the story’s final scene a serpent – “You are vile, vile” – rears its ugly head.

First published in the London Mercury,1922. Collected in The Garden Party, Constable, 1922 and widely since then

‘To Room Nineteen’ by Doris Lessing

Lessing’s fiction has gone out of fashion. Perhaps it’s her seriousness – her engagement with Marxism and the ideas of Freud – which makes her unpopular at a time when feminism is reduced to individual ‘empowerment’ and identity politics. This story, written a few years before the Women’s Liberation Movement took shape, shows what an indispensable writer she is. The narrative seems impersonal, a case history. Susan and Matthew are a privileged couple with a comfortable life. Yet Lessing shows us how they are bound together in a kind of growing incomprehension. It is simply not enough, as Woolf suggested, for a woman to have money and a room of her own, if she remains tied to familial expectations. Various means of escape are tried, but for Susan, ultimate freedom is only to be found in Room Nineteen. 

First published in A Man and Two Women, Simon & Schuster, 1963. Collected in To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One, Flamingo 2002. Available online here