‘Licenced to Kill’ by Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively is one of the queens of short fiction. Another book gone missing: Nothing Missing but the Samovar. She does good memorable titles too. So in lieu of the Samovar, which is indeed missing, a more recent collection, and Licenced to Kill. I’m fairly sure I heard this on the radio before reading it. It starts as a rumination on old age as Pauline and her carer Cally fumble their way out of the house and through the shopping run, until Pauline, in Marks & Spencer, casually reveals that she was once a spy. The story pivots as she remembers places she’s been and people she has killed, and Cally decides that perhaps, her planned career in hospitality isn’t for her after all.

First published in The Purple Swamp Hen, Penguin, 2017

‘Direction of the Road’ by Ursula Le Guin

Another queen of the short story. I’ve been reading Ursula Le Guin since my teens, and rereading and discovering entirely different meanings as I grow into her stories. I could have chosen a baker’s dozen of stories just by Ursula – the only author I ever wrote a fan letter to (so far!)

I was looking for Sea Road, but it too has disappeared. Most of the stories in Buffalo Gals are slight and mischievous, and ‘Direction of Road’ is too, but also mind-bending in its exploration of relativity, as a tree grows and experiences the change of pace as walkers become horse riders become jalopy owners become an entire traffic jam, for whom the tree must accomplish the increasingly complex task of appearing to grown closer/bigger and diminish so that the poor humans think they are actually going somewhere.

First published in Orbit 14, 1984, and collected in Buffalo Gals, Roc Fantasy, 1990

‘Lull’s Wirth’ by Jeremy Gavron

When is a short story not a short story? When it is part of a novel. Except Gavron’s Acre is made from dozens of short pieces, some not even stories: poems, marginalia, court documents, cartoons – every possible genre is tapped to describe the imagined history of Brick Lane in East London. ‘Lull’s Wirth’ is a tale of a simple life lived in a time of danger and betrayal, and the fatal decision to travel in search of a smith to mend a broken scythe. I remembered it particularly for the side purchase of some medicine to ease the painful joints of the main character’s wife – such a casually loving moment – I forgot that it was this transaction that brings trouble.

First published as part of An Acre of Barren Ground, Scribner, 2005

‘There’s a Woman Works Down the Chip Shop’ by Angela Readman

What a joy this story is. The narrator’s mother, a downtrodden, faceless chip shop worker, finds herself being noticed by another unremarkable woman, and after a simple conversation where she feels seen for perhaps the first time in her life, apparently morphs into Elvis. ‘Elvis’ is a metaphor for inner confidence and an awakening of a different sexuality, unrecognised by the child. It is funny, cruel, loving, sad and joyful all at once.

First published in Root, ed. by Kitty Fitzgerald, Iron Press, 2013, and collected in Don’t Try This at Home, And Other Stories, 2015

‘The Cat Lover’ by Kate Atkinson

Many, many short stories use the trappings of folktale. Very few manage the cadences without the cliches, originality rather than predictability. Kate Atkinson’s take has overtones of Beauty and the Beast and the Princess and the Frog, and is witty and verbally delightful. A stray tomcat gradually takes over its rescuer’s life, hunting larger and more bizarre prey as it grows to the size of a tiger.

“A secret cache of dodos, the odd phoenix or two, not to mention the unfortunate capture of the (surprisingly tiny) hawk-headed sun god Ra…”

Until, terrified he will eat her next, she wishes him away – but he leaves an unexpected parting gift.

Published in Not the End of the World, Doubleday, 2002

Introduction

Before my short story collection was published, it was part of a PhD thesis on ‘postfeminist feeling in contemporary women’s short stories’. In my PhD, I mainly looked at short stories about girls, a word which I use in a deliberately ambiguous way to refer to anyone who feels or has ever felt themselves to be part of girl culture. The stories I have selected for my personal anthology all have something to say about girlhood. As such, themes such as danger, sex, love, friendship and family recur across my selection. But perhaps, even more than those things, each of these stories is preoccupied with the fantasy of other possible lives – lives that could have been lived, those that might yet be lived. This capacity for imagining oneself anew, for changing, for grasping for something bigger, is something I associate with the liminal period of girlhood – but it is also something I associate with the short story. It is a thrilling form, both to read and write, dense with feeling and with possibility. I hope at least one of my chosen stories will speak to you and draw you into its world.

‘Los Angeles’ by Emma Cline

‘Los Angeles’ tells the story of Alice, a young woman who has moved to the city to follow her dream of becoming an actor. She spends her days working in a clothing store, taking acting classes and running on the beach, until one day a younger colleague tells her about a new way to make money – and perhaps reclaim a sense of control over her own life. I must have read this story hundreds of times – carefully examining the way Emma Cline builds heart-pounding tension, writes in spare, precise prose, and considers femininity as a source of currency and power.

First published in Granta’s Best Young American Novelists 2017, and available for subscribers to read here; collected in Daddy, Chatto & Windus, 2020

‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’ by Jenny Zhang

Jenny Zhang’s short story collection Sour Heart is vivid, gross and hilarious – and ‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’ is no exception. It follows a nine-year-old girl, Lucy, whose youthful enthusiasm is played for laughs: “I lived, breathed, and exuded mind-boggling, head-spinning, neck-craning, heart-pounding, ravishing beauty. I was the best looking girl in fourth grade.” Yet as the story unfolds, we learn that Lucy is capable of acts of cruelty against the other girls in her life – both intentional and unintentional. The story ramps up to its horrifying climax, and the gap between Lucy’s understanding of the increasingly adult world around her and its consequences widens to a point of no return.

First published in Diagram, and available to read online here; collected in Sour Heart, Bloomsbury, 2017

‘Head to Toe’ by Abigail Ulman

Much like ‘The Empty the Empty the Empty’, this story from Abigail Ulman’s collection Hot Little Hands explores the complexities of girl friendships. The best friends in this story are Australian teenagers who are incredibly bored with their privileged lives – filled with shopping, boys, parties and occasional drug taking. The girls break out of their lethargy by revisiting a horse-riding camp they attended as younger girls, where they enjoy taking on the role of big sisters to their roommates at the camp and offering advice. This is an exquisitely written story about the liminal period of girlhood where the child’s impulse to play and pretend coexists with the desire to experiment with more adult behaviours.

Published in Hot Little Hands, Spiegel & Grau/Penguin, 2016

‘Would Like to Meet’ by May-Lan Tan

At the start of this story, struggling artist Vivien is robbed at knifepoint where she works, in a gift shop. This brush with death affects her profoundly – though at first, she doesn’t know how quite to express it. Eventually, she is compelled to respond to an advertisement listed in a magazine by a couple who are looking for a “conscious female” to join them. This is an elegant, moving story about loneliness and the fantasies we make up to get ourselves through difficult times.

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

‘The Weak Spot’ by Sophie Mackintosh

The first time I read this story, I could literally feel my brain firing with ideas. Through the invention of a dystopian world in which teenage girls are trained to murder men from a young age in order to protect themselves, Sophie Mackintosh examines the fine line between danger and power. Though the girls in this story take murder classes (otherwise known as “Specialised Life Skills for Girls”), the world they live in will never allow them to be treated as equals.

First published online by Granta, 2016, and available to read here

‘Mr Salary’ by Sally Rooney

This early Sally Rooney story is as sardonically funny as the title promises. It follows the complex relationship between Sukie and Nathan, who are sort of friends, sort of family and, by the end, a little bit lovers. Nathan is older and wealthier than Sukie; she is vulnerable and desperately in love with him. Their relationship, uncategorisable but deeply caring and affectionate, is used as a lens through which Rooney explores family, class and power dynamics. Sukie presents a very cool, funny and unaffected persona when she is with Nathan, but throughout the story we get glimpses of an emotional life bubbling just beneath the surface. Throughout, we wonder: is this love, or something more transactional?

First published by the Irish Times in 2017 and available to read here. Published as a paperback by Faber in 2019

‘Virgins’ by Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans’ story introduces us to a trio of teenage friends: Erica (our narrator), Jasmine and Michael. The three friends have an easy closeness which is shown through their witty, cutting and perfectly pitched dialogue. The teenagers exist in a world marked by danger and employ various strategies to keep themselves safe; nevertheless, as Erica observes, there is “no such thing as safe, only safer”. Their paths diverge sharply at a certain point in the story. Evans dissects, with breathtaking precision, the complex strategies girls employ to keep themselves safe in hostile situations.

First published in The Paris Review, Issue 182, Fall 2007. Available for subscribers to read here