The shortlist for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award has been announced:
- ‘Barmouth’ by Lisa Blower
- ‘We Are Watching Something Terrible Happen’ by Lavinia Greenlaw
- ‘Mrs Fox’ by Sarah Hall
- ‘Notes from the House Spirits’ by Lucy Wood
- ‘Prepositions’ by Lionel Shriver
I’ve been following this award for the past few years, and it always throws light o some interesting stories. This is the first time, however, that I’ve already been familiar with one of the stories in advance. I loved Lucy Wood’s collection Diving Belles (which I reviewed for Strange Horizons here), and ‘Notes from the House Spirits’ was one of my favourite stories in that book. So that’s who I’m rooting for, though I expect there is some stiff competition in that list.
The winner of this year’s Award will be announced on Tuesday 8 October. In the meantime, there is an anthology of the stories available, and there will also be podcasts of story readings from BBC Radio 4 going up this week.
27th September 2013 at 11:37 pm
House Spirits was my third favourite. I liked the idea but didn’t think it made as much impression on me as a couple of the others. I thought there was scope for a stronger emotional punch. But I do like my stories to grip me with immediacy.
Nice that the BBC runs this competition, thus guaranteeing a run of good stories for the week.