‘Keep Your Miracles To Yourself’ by Zoe Gilbert and Jarred McGinnis

Zoe Gilbert’s and Jarred McGinnis’s ‘Keep Your Miracles To Yourself’ is bizarrely serene I think that’s why I like it, a quietly endearing love story. Scratch Books, run by loveli Tom Conaghan, recently published eight short stories each by two authors ~ Duets (2024). ‘Keep Your Miracles To Yourself’ (no. 2) opens “I leaned over the railing, looking into the green glass of the canal’s water. A mobility scooter and a traffic cone […] lay at the bottom like Pompeii lovers. Beautiful and gross in the way only cities manage honestly”. Hook. Ex-alcoholic narrator Martin nervously anticipates telling wife Jo he’s been fired, especially cos they’ve just had a little bébé (born by emergency caesarean into a “grey island”). He takes a walk. Cue gorish-dead pigeon “Event” then maddo happenings. An agent from firm “Auricle” with nails “black in a style called Stiletto” and “earrings like small chandeliers, which plinked and tinkled” (I wish it said “plinked and tinked”) and a perverse aspiration to eat lead from a special “gold propeller-pencil” forcibly installs a singing mouth into “Chosen One” Martin’s belly, visible thru glass portal abit like Teletubbies. Martin returns after the belly-installation to Jo and “rubbed her back and told her it’s alright; we’ll be alright”. Martin’s belly performs at the South Bank Centre’s Festival Hall (a disaster) and the resulting celebrity means Martin gets his job back and he and Jo live happily ever after, reading bébé to sleep. Triumphant. In the margins I’d scrawled Sophie Ellis-Bexter’s ‘Groove Jet’ (2000) had been playing whilst I was reading it ~ apt !

Second of eight stories in DUETS, Scratch Books 2024

‘Fingal’ by Samuel Beckett

Recently I was at the Samuel Beckett Centre trying to work out whether Samuel Beckett had anything to do with psychogeography in 1950s Rive Gauche Paris. I really like ‘Fingal’ from his earliest throng of short stories More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) (my copy is Grove Press fyi). It’s less formally radical than later collections like Fizzles(1976), but radical nonetheless. All of More Pricks Than Kicks focuses on “Belacqua”, a young fellow named after minor lazy-but-rewarded character woo in Dante’s Divina Comedia (1321). After an initial tale detailing Belacqua’s precisest requirements for constructing a perfect lobster-and-gorgonzola-sandwich, ‘Fingal’ pictures he with “Winnie” who’s “pretty, hot and witty, in that order” (can you believe Samuel Beckett was saying “hot” in this way in the 1930s?!) going outside Dublin on a countryside adventure. Past ruins, burrows, furze, brambles, and slopes to the top of a hill overlooking the county of Fingal, Belacqua feels like a “sad animal” but apparently Winnie’s high-spirited: “‘The Dublin mountains’ she said ‘don’t they look lovely, so dreamy’”. Aah. They talk about “Milan (to rime with villain)” ha ha while they’re up there, “travelled spinster” Belacqua shaming Winnie for her geographical short-comings. “Things were beginning to blow up nasty” between them but then Belacqua and Winnie kiss and “their moods were in accordance” and “things were somehow very pleasant all of a sudden” as they gaze on Portraine Lunatic Aslyum (which Belacqua had thought was a bread factory). They go there and meet Dr. Sholto, with whom Winnie is somehow acquainted, for a drink and chat avoiding a farmer Belacqua worries wants to attack them, then a bike is stolen and then there’s an escape to a pub. It is an Evocative Romp.

From More Pricks Than Kicks, first published by Chatto & Windus 1934, various editions thereafter

‘Tuscan Leather’ by Laura Grace Ford

How regrettable it is that magazines stop ~ Rest-In-Sweet-Peace The White Review! ‘Tuscan Leather’ by Laura Grace Ford is signature-ly bleak. I listened to Ayşegül Savaş on the difficulty of writing fiction that’s happy-without-smug the other day and was heartened it might be possibe; but Laura Grace Ford’s work is often unhappy and * so * far from smug and this too is welcome. “KARA” and “FRANK” make up ‘Tuscan Leather’ as connected narratives. In “KARA”, Kara copes with an abusive boyfriend situation drifting “skittish” East London “the air is cinder toffee and carbon” amid “thirty-story ravines and ziggurat hotels, new expressways and conference centres” and “UK Garage, decelerated Jungle”. Laura Grace Ford is Princess of Ambience I think and also really good at doing getting ready: “I rubbed a circle in the mirror, raced through the ritual: orange lipstick, copper eyeshadow, black kohl”. ‘Tuscan Leather’ is meandery, spatially (weaving evictions demolitions new-builds) and temporally (bad memories everywhere kindled by “chanced-upon street” or “the scent of Tuscan Leather on a stranger’s skin”). Endurance glimmers with sum1 named “Idris”: “our relationship kept us going through the winter, it staved off the dark”. <3. We learn Frank’s someone Kara, who wears a Puffa jacket, once was a care-worker for. Sumptuous writing, melodic through dank dereliction. Sparklers and the frankinsence. Frank, after Kara’s wondered if he’s okay wherever he is, in “FRANK” then reveries Kara gorgeously. Laura Grace Ford’s illustrations are there too – paintings, biro-drawings, watery blue ink. She really gets it  <3.

First published in The White Review No. 30, 2021 and to read online here

A Personal Anthology of Women Unhinged

I’ve always been drawn to women in fiction who don’t always do the right thing. Toni Morrison’s Sula. Charlotte Brontë’s Bertha Rochester (and Jean Rhys’s Antoinette Cosway). Shirley Jackson’s Mary Katherine Blackwood. These are women who are making space for themselves in a world that would rather they not exist.

The characters in the short stories I chose for my anthology all make decisions that range from questionable to morally abhorrent. Some are seemingly minor infractions—stealing a shoe from your daughter-in-law’s closet, or buying concert tickets to see a high school fling’s band perform without telling your husband. Others have greater stakes and are less forgivable: donning a Confederate flag bikini, or, well, murder(s).

Good fiction is not a blueprint for ethical living. It asks more questions than it answers. Good fiction delves into character, makes the reader squirm because maybe they see a little bit of their own imperfect self in the protagonist that’s making these unwise choices, or perhaps feel implicated in the societal pressures that are driving the character to act in the way they do. The beauty of fiction is that it allows us to see the world through the eyes of (or at least sit in the metaphorical getaway car next to) these complex, conflicted characters.

After all, how can we expect women to remain “hinged” in a world where our rights to exist are constantly being threatened? Where we are either confined by the male gaze or ignored entirely? The same goes double for women from marginalized identities, who have a whole other set of societal expectations, constraints, and violence to contend with. One can forgive these characters for not always following the rules. But who is doing the forgiving? And who is asking for it? And who is making the rules?

Here are twelve stories—or, rather, eleven short stories and a song—that ask these questions.

‘Ghosts and Empties’ by Lauren Groff

A woman contends with her rage and anxiety by going on walks around her Florida neighborhood. Though the story opens with the narrator proclaiming “I have somehow become a woman who yells,” we never actually see her do so. Instead, we see the neighborhood: a place where there are controlled burns in parks where unhoused people shelter, where cygnets are gobbled up by otters. Under Groff’s keen eye, these descriptions of walks around the neighborhood become a treatise on the transitory, cyclical, and sometimes violent nature of all things, the melancholy that comes with watching change happen before our very eyes.

First published in The New Yorker, July 2015, and available to subscribers to read here; collected in Florida, Riverhead, 2018

‘Lost in the City’ by Edward P. Jones

Lydia Walsh, having fallen asleep with a man whose name she can’t recall, wakes up to a phone call at 3 a.m. informing her that her mother has died in her nursing home. Jittery from cocaine, she calls a cab to take her to claim her mother’s body from the nursing home and instead, instructs the driver to get her lost—perhaps an attempt to escape the barrage of memories that could be triggered by the familiar city around her, or to delay the grim task at hand, or maybe both. We’re never really sure, but the uncertainty feels intentional—choreographed by the author to make us, the readers, feel just as uneasy as Lydia does. The driver replies that as a Capitol cab driver, he “ain’t allowed to get lost.” But he drives on anyway, taking Lydia past the D.C. locations she knows so well, plunging her deeper into the memories she’s trying to avoid. Through her attempt to escape the familiar, she only becomes further entrenched in it, lost in her own memories, and though it’s uncomfortable, the reader is along for the ride.

From Lost in the City, William Morrow, 1992

‘The Beast’ by Megan Cummins

I’ve long been fascinated by fiction that deals with deception, and ‘The Beast’ is an excellent example. Beverly buys tickets to see a high school fling in concert without telling her husband. As the story progresses, we learn that her lie is a small one in the scope of the lies that the men in her life have entangled her in. Cummins toys with an enticing will they/won’t they narrative between Beverly and her boss; Beverly and her high school fling. Redemption, however, doesn’t come from finding a man, but in finding freedom from the deceitful men in her life. Cummins isn’t shy about using issues related to healthcare and money to drive the conflicts in her stories, a refreshing dose of realism that feels lacking in a lot of contemporary fiction.

First published in Ninth Letter, Fall/Winter 2016-17 and collected in If the Body Allows It, University of Nebraska Press, 2020. A slightly different version is available to read at CRAFT Literary

‘A Little Burst’ by Elizabeth Strout

I really could have chosen any of the stories in this book, which is a beautiful example of how linked stories can—piece by piece—build a character as vivid and alive as Olive Kitteridge, in a way that simply wouldn’t work in the form of a novel. We all know an Olive; we’ve all been an Olive. The present action in ‘A Little Burst’ takes place entirely in Olive Kitteridge son’s bedroom three hours after his wedding, where Olive has isolated herself to escape the noise of the party and eavesdrop, a slice of blueberry cake concealed in her handbag. Of course, she hears her daughter-in-law dispense with some unkind comments that were not meant for her ears. Of course, being Olive, she takes her own unique form of revenge. There are many reasons a story like this shouldn’t work. Olive is a passive observer, for example, and most of the important scenes in the story are delivered through flashback, but Strout weaves it all together seamlessly with her rich character detail and Olive’s sad, stubborn wisdom.

First published in The New Yorker, June 1998, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Olive Kitteridge, Random House, 2008

‘Bridezilla’ by Kim Fu

The opening line of ‘Bridezilla’ introduces two questions: a marriage proposal, and the possibility of a mysterious sea monster off the shores of the coastal city where Leah, the protagonist, resides. Leah assents to her partner’s lukewarm proposal, but spends the entirety of the wedding planning fretting over her decision. There was a time she imagined a fairytale wedding on a beach, now she’s not so sure. She’s not sure about a lot of things. Her trajectory throughout the story is one of indecision and uncertainty. Reading “Bridezilla,” I became so wrapped up in Leah’s anxiety that I almost forgot about the sea monster, until, well, I didn’t. On its surface, ‘Bridezilla’ is about a woman getting cold feet; but lurking beneath that familiar premise is a chilling fable about the very contemporary anxieties of planning for a future in the midst of impending ecological collapse.

First published in Lesser-Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Tin House, 2022. Also available to read online at Oprah Daily

‘Nemecia’ by Kirstin Valdez Quade

The strength of this story is in the ways it withholds information to keep us grounded in the point of view of a child, in this case Maria, Nemecia’s younger cousin, who both looks up to, fears and is jealous of her older cousin. The fibs that Nemecia tells Maria—that she killed her mother and put her grandfather in a coma—cover up a darker secret that is revealed later in the story. ‘Nemecia’ is a stunning example of how a novel’s-worth of family secrets and complex relationships can be deftly condensed in a couple-dozen pages.

First published in Narrative, and available to read here. Collected in Night at the Fiestas, Norton, 2015, as well as in Best American Short Stories 2013

‘Women! In! Peril!’ by Jessie Ren Marshall

Told through a series of short dispatches from a passenger on spacecraft carrying sleeping women to populate Planet B after Earth is all but destroyed, the title story of Jessie Ren Marshall’s collection is imbued with her signature blend of humor, heart, and terror.  There’s a moment I found particularly resonant, where the narrator ponders the usefulness of narrative in a world that’s been lost: “IDK why our stories have to make sense when the world doesn’t.” But “Women! In! Peril!” does make sense, in the sad logic of tragedy. It’s also reminiscent of Covid-era lockdown, when for a time it did feel like we were the only people awake on a spaceship, typing our little thoughts out to the void in an attempt to make contact, barreling towards terrors unknown.

From Women! In! Peril!, Bloomsbury, 2024

‘G’ by Ling Ma

The titular G refers to a fictional drug that makes you invisible. It was a drug that best friends Bea and Bonnie did together often when they were in college—too often, in fact. Years later and cleaned up, Bea visits Bonnie for a final farewell before leaving New York to enroll in PhD program on in California. Bonnie presents her with a parting gift: a dose of G. Woven throughout this fateful last trip is the story of a friendship that veers into unhealthy codependence and then to flat out self-destruction as both girls contend with body image and identity struggles. The best addiction narratives show us the elation that comes with using, and Ling Ma makes G-induced invisibility so tantalizing: it “lifts the tiny anvil of self-consciousness… Just go out and voyeur around, nothing but a Guston eyeball bouncing down Amsterdam…” A standout story in one of my favorite collections in recent memory.

First published in Zoetrope: Allstory. Collected in Bliss Montage, FSG, 2022

‘Winter Chemistry’ by Joy Williams

Julep and Judy are teenagers in a charmless seaside town who sneak away to spy on their chemistry teacher each night. An innocent enough premise that, in the hands of a lesser writer, might turn into a saccharine coming-of-age tale about the girls’ budding sexuality. And it is a coming-of-age tale, in the sense that coming of age as a woman means confronting the dangers that lurk in the dark corners of daily existence. Williams is an expert at subtext and withholding. Woven throughout the story are hints of blood and menace that foreshadow the final, violent scene. I first read this story on a trash-strewn beach in July, marveling at the deliberate way Williams crafts each crystalline sentence, chilled despite the summer heat.

First published in The Paris Review, Spring1974, as ‘A Story about Friends’, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Taking Care, Random House, 1985, and also in The Visiting Privilege, Vintage, 2015

‘Boys Go to Jupiter’ by Danielle Evans

At what point does inaction become action? This is the question at the heart of Danielle Evans’s cogent narrative of a young white woman’s flirtation with some of the uglier factions of her identity. When a photo of Claire in a Confederate flag bikini goes unintentionally viral, she must reckon with the fallout on the campus of her small liberal arts college. Rather than apologize, Claire doubles down and sides with her small but vocal group of defenders. This story is all the more poignant considering it was published in 2017, before the term “cancel culture” was ceaselessly lobbed around by pundits. 

First published in The Sewanee Review, Fall 2017, and available for subscribers to read here. Collected in The Office of Historical Corrections, Riverhead, 2020