Category: Short Fiction

Still: ‘From the Archive’ by James Miller

11th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the main seat in Hornsey Town Hall’s council chamber, with three globe-shaped lights hanging above, and a clock behind. The edges of the photographic slide are visible in the image.

The story: This piece treats Bakker’s photograph as an archive document from the distant past. Much of its effect comes from seeing how Miller’s unidentified future writer has misinterpreted the image, and how knowledge of history and culture have become mangled over time. It’s amusing to read, but also leaves one with the nagging thought of just how easily that sort of thing could happen…

Link: James Miller’s website / interview with Miller on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘The Blind Man’ by Nicholas Royle

8th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a box of crumpled strong-room bags, with numbered labels attached.

The story: Royle’s narrator tells how he became interested in buses as a boy, and stole some destination blinds and bus Fleetbooks. There’s a great rhythm to this piece, helped along by the short lists of bus destinations that punctuate it. And Royle tops it off with a dark twist at the end.

Link: Nicholas Royle’s website / interview with Royle on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘Switchgirls’ by Tania Hershman

7th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: four old-fashioned light switches arranged in a square, each with a label bearing a woman’s name.

The story: a monologue by a narrator whose identity is ambiguous, perhaps a female robot lamenting the loss of her sisters. Details of ‘real’ life are heightened through their transformation into Hershman’s science-fiction idiom, and the ending is especially poignant.

Link: Tania Hershman’s website / interview with Hershman on her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘A Rose for Raha’ by Ava Homa

7th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a dried yellow rose lying on top of what looks like a document folder of some sort. A sticker with someone’s name can be seen next to the rose.

The story: Raha and Farzad are young sisters; their father, a refugee, is unable to find work, and faces jail if he can’t pay the rent. The two girls play as their parents argue; Homa portrays this effectively, underscoring the family’s difficulties whilst maintaining the distance that comes with writing from Raha’s viewpoint. The titular rose acts a symbol of the family’s hope – something to keep growing in the garden, and not to remove, for fear of angering the landlord.

Link: Ava Homa’s website

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘Pa-dang’ by Jan van Mersbergen

5th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the handle of a door that’s been left ajar. A patch of the door’s green paint, next to the handle, has worn or been scratched away to reveal white underneath.

The story: this is the first English-language story by Jan van Mersbergen, the author of Tomorrow Pamplona. Told mainly in dialogue, it concerns a young man named Anton being taken home to see his family for his twenty-third birthday. It’s clear from the start that all is not well with Anton, and the choppy rhythms of van Mersbergen’s prose underline the sense of unease, up to a rather chilling end.

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘The Staircase Treatment’ by Myriam Frey

3rd October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a staircase viewed as it curves around into a new flight. We can’t see where the stairs lead, only that they are shabby and dusty.

The story: after our narrator gave birth, she developed memory problems. Thinking of different words as she climbed stairs helped her recover – but she lost touch with her son as an adult. Now she goes to visit him for the first time in years. There’s a neat reversal in this story, and I like Frey’s use of the staircase as an image and venue.

Link: Myriam Frey’s website / interview with Frey on her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘Corridor’ by Evie Wyld

2nd October 2012 / / 2 Comments

The photograph: the end of a wood-panelled corridor. Light streams in through the windows in a door to the left; but the dark wood and the solid wall ahead make the overall feeling oppressive.

The story: a very short piece whose narrator describes how her childhood self tried to keep bad dreams at bay by imagining a corridor as a neutral space. Wyld keeps the atmosphere suitably unsettling, and any hope she offers comes with its own nagging doubt.

Link: Evie Wyld’s website

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Sunday Story Society: “Drifting House”

30th September 2012 / / 5 Comments

On the table today, we have Krys Lee‘s story “Drifting House”, which you can read on the Granta website here.

It’s the title story of Lee’s debut collection, which has been reviewed in various places, including: The Daily Beast (by Anna Clark); Sul Romanzo (by Monica Raffaele Addamo) The Short Review (by Elaine Chew); Korea Joongang Daily (by Bart Schaneman); Pop Culture Nerd (by Thuy Dinh); The Guardian (by Kamila Shamsie); The Telegraph (by Andrew Marszal); The Financial Times (by Sung J. Woo); NPR Books (by Heller McAlpin); The San Francisco Chronicle (by Marie Myung-Ok Lee); Editorial Eyes; Of Books and Reading; The Brunette Bibliophile.

And here are a couple of interviews with the author, at The Rumpus and The Economist.

Conversation Starters

A couple of questions you might like to consider:

What do you think of Lee’s use of landscape in the story? Is this more than just a physical journey for the brothers?

How well does the structure of “Drifting House” work for you?

Next time: on 14 October, we’ll be discussing “Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring” by M. John Harrison. See the full schedule.

Still: ‘Sanctuary’ by Andrew Blackman

29th September 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a stopped clock on a wall. The wall is bare white, apart from trails of rusty water streaming down from the base of the clock.

The story: an armed man being chased by the police claims sanctuary in a modern church. This story is really enriched by its context, because, like the Still exhibition (albeit in a very different way!), it’s about a space being repurposed. I also love the way Blackman transforms the imagery of dirt trailing down a wall; the ending of ‘Sanctuary’ becomes as much a tableau as one of Bakker’s photographs.

Link: Andrew Blackman’s website / interview with Blackman on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘My Wife the Hyena’ by Nina Killham

27th September 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: through an open office door, we see a dusty desk with a cardboard folder placed in front of the chair. The eye is drawn beyond the desk to an empty coat-stand in the corner of the room.

The story: a man tells of his relationship with his wife, who is indeed a hyena. I love the matter-of-fact tone of this story (‘Her cooking is never memorable. It is difficult to cook with four paws’). What Killham describes is absurd, doesn’t make sense even on its own terms if you think about it too closely… But, for those four pages,  the author convinces you it’s all true.

Link: Nina Killham’s website

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

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