Tag: BBC National Short Story Award

BBC National Short Story Award 2017: ‘Murmur’ by Will Eaves

28th September 2017 / / 0 Comments

It’s BBC National Short Story Award time again. This is an award that I’ve covered quite a lot over the years; and I’m pleased to be able to run a story-by-story review of this year’s shortlist. Thanks to Comma Press and ED Public Relations for providing an advance copy of the anthology. 

I was excited about this year’s shortlist when I first saw it, because it’s a mixture of favourite authors (such as Cynan Jones and Helen Oyeyemi) and writers of whom I’ve heard great things. Today, we start with a former Goldsmiths Prize nominee: Will Eaves, and his story ‘Murmur’… 

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The narrator of Will Eaves’s story is a mid-20th century gay academic named Alec, who is arrested for gross indecency and made to undergo a course of hormone injections, as well as attending sessions with a psychoanalyst. The scattered notes of Alec’s journal comprise the story that we read. 

Alec contemplates the nature of mind and, as a materialist, is troubled by the possibility that there is a final ‘leap’ he cannot explain, that mind may not be able to encompass itself. At the level of narrative, Alec considers that we can describe our actions and conscious thoughts; but then there is what he calls the “inner murmur” beneath, the deeper thinking which may be hidden from us.

‘Murmur’ is a strong start to this year’s shortlist. I appreciate the way that it works in harmony across multiple levels, from day-to-day living to the fundamentals of the universe; and that it interrogates the limits of its own form. The ending carries a frisson of dread as the standard tools of narrative fiction are turned against themselves.

Listen to a reading of ‘Murmur’. 

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: the result

6th October 2015 / / 0 Comments

The 2015 BBC National Short Story Award has gone to Jonathan Buckley for his story ‘Briar Road’. Mark Haddon was the runner-up, for ‘Bunny’.

Well, what can I say? That result is almost the exact opposite of my own personal preference. It never ceases to amaze me how different opinions on fiction can be.  Still, congratulations to all.

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

This is part of a series of posts about the shortlist for the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award.

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: my pick of the shortlist

5th October 2015 / / 0 Comments

This is part of a series of posts about the shortlist for the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award.

Okay, I’ve read through the shortlist, so it’s time to choose my personal winner…

If the BBC National Short Story Award were mine to give, I’d hand it to Jeremy Page. ‘Do it Now, Jump the Table’ is the story that I enjoyed the most, but I think it’s also the most successful.

My runner-up would either be Hilary Mantel or Frances Leviston. There are aspects of both their stories that work well for me, but I don’t think they quite have the unity of Page’s.

We’ll find out the winning story on Tuesday night.

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: ‘Do it Now, Jump the Table’ by Jeremy Page

4th October 2015 / / 0 Comments

This is part of a series of posts about the shortlist for the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award.

Thom goes to visit his girlfriend Susan’s parents in rural Wales. On the way there, he remembers Susan’s warnings about them sometimes walking around the house with little (if anything) to cover their modesty, and being free about touching each other. These colour the way Thom approaches the meeting, making an already awkward situation even more so. But Thom finds his feet with time – or at least he thinks he does…

I really enjoyed this story. Page’s humour really hits the mark, and I don’t mind admitting that this went a long way. There’s also a lightness of touch here which I don’t really find in the other stories, and it works well. But the heart of Page’s tale is the sense of Thom entering unfamiliar territory – a household and family whose conventions and codes he does not understand – and trying to find his way. It’s sharp and funny… good stuff.

Listen to a reading of ‘Do it Now, Jump the Table’

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ by Hilary Mantel

4th October 2015 / / 0 Comments

This is part of a series of posts about the shortlist for the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award.

Perhaps the single best-known short story that would have been eligible for this year’s award, purely on account of its being the title story of a collection by such a high-profile author (oh, and perhaps the storm-in-a-teacup that went on in the media over the subject matter, I suppose). Mantel imagines the occasion in August 1983 when Margaret Thatcher went into hospital in Windsor for eye surgery. Her narrator lives within sight of the hospital, and receives a visitor who is at first assumed to be a photographer – though it soon becomes apparent that he’s after a different kind of shot.

It’s been a recurring theme of my engagement with the shortlisted stories that I’ve found the tone of the narration a little jarring (at least to begin with) in the context of what the stories were doing. It’s the same here: Mantel’s protagonist looks back on these events calmly, with a certain sense of being above it all (“Picture first the street where she breathed her last. It is a quiet street, sedate, shaded by old trees…”). This seems to work as something of a wink to the reader: you know that Thatcher wasn’t assassinated in real life, but this is fiction, so all bets are off, okay? But I also find that it takes me out of the moment a little. All the same, the interplay between narrator and (would-be?) sniper brings humour, then tension.

Listen to a reading of ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: ‘Broderie Anglaise’ by Frances Leviston

2nd October 2015 / / 0 Comments

This is part of a series of posts about the shortlist for the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award.

Invited to her cousin’s wedding – but “not maid of honour, not even a bridesmaid” – a young woman determines to take a private revenge by wearing a dress that will subtly outshine the bride and annoy that side of the family. Unable to find something suitable in the shops, she decides to make her own in secret. The trouble is that, no matter what method she tries, she can’t quite get the hang of it.

There were times when I found Leviston’s first-person narration a little over-egged (that is, more like a writer’s voice than a character’s), especially in comparison to the snappier rhythms of the contemporary dialogue. But I guess you could also take the view that it creates a contrast between the narrator’s interior and exterior life, in a story which is all about breaking down emotional barriers. The protagonist’s relationship with her mother is transformed through the act of making this dress, leading to the kind of symbolic patterning for which I always have a soft spot in fiction.

Listen to a reading of ‘Broderie Anglaise’

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: ‘Bunny’ by Mark Haddon

2nd October 2015 / / 2 Comments

This is part of a series of posts about the shortlist for the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award.

I was not much enamoured of this story at all, I’m sorry to say. Birdy Wallis is a morbidly obese twentysomething who finds the scope of his world contracting, until he’s befriended by Leah, an old acquaintance from school. The tale is one of two characters searching for an emotional connection: Birdy stuck in his house, and Leah who never followed her friends to the big city.

There’s some effective use of rhythm and repetition in Haddon’s prose, and (for example) the opening passage detailing Birdy’s excesses is appropriately enticing and repulsive at the same time. But ‘Birdy’ ends up falling awkwardly between several stools: it’s a character study that doesn’t get under the skin of its characters enough for my liking; its realist approach points towards social commentary, but ultimately it doesn’t seem to say much; it has a touch of the macabre that doesn’t gel with the rest, and leaves the story’s ending unearned. Frustrating.

Listen to a reading of ‘Bunny’

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

BBC National Short Story Award 2015: ‘Briar Road’ by Jonathan Buckley

1st October 2015 / / 0 Comments

It’s BBC National Short Story Award time again, and they’ve kindly sent me an copy of the shortlist anthology, so I can do a story-by-story blog of the list. I’ll be going through each of the five stories, before the winner is announced on Tuesday. It’s been a good few years since I’ve done one of these, so I’m excited to get started…

First up, Jonathan Buckley’s ‘Briar Road’, which begins with its narrator observing the house she’s about to visit. If I’m honest, some of the imagery here feels a little too crisp and studied (“Every sill gleams like milk”); but this woman’s occupation and purpose eventually justify her narrative voice. She is a psychic, come to help a family whose daughter has gone missing; the way she describes it, her talent is like picking up traces that others wouldn’t notice in the manner of someone with a more acute sense of  smell or taste, so it’s only natural that she should be finely observant, and her voice rather measured.

‘Briar Road’ is a story of familial tensions being revealed, albeit in an understated way. The trouble for me is that, on the one hand, I find it short on ambiguity (although Buckley doesn’t spell everything out, you can infer pretty clearly); but, on the other, the sheen of the prose creates a distancing effect which lessens the story’s emotional impact, despite its directness. I find ‘Briar Road’ fine as it goes; but I would have wished for more.

Listen to a reading of ‘Briar Road’

Anthology details (Foyles affiliate link)

The BBC National Short Story Award 2015, Comma Press paperback

Awards round-up

2nd October 2014 / / 4 Comments

A few bits of news and comment on awards that I like to follow:

On Tuesday, this year’s BBC National Short Story Award went to Lionel Shriver for her story ‘Kilifi Creek‘. The runner up was Zadie Smith for ‘Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets‘; the other shortlisted authors were Tessa Hadley, Francesca Rhydderch, and Rose Tremain. I hadn’t caught any of the stories prior to the announcement; but I’ve since read the Comma Press anthology, and I have to say that Smith’s story is easily my favourite of the five. Shriver’s winning piece is not really to my taste:  it’s written in a (to me) fussy literary prose for which I’m increasingly losing patience. I think my tastes in reading are shifting once more.

So to the Goldsmiths Prize, for “fiction that opens up new possibilities for the novel form” – something that interests me increasingly, as my interest in straightforward realism wanes. The Prize got off to an excellent start last year, going to Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. I was really looking forward to seeing what would be selected this year, and now we have a shortlist:

  • Rachel Cusk, Outline (Faber & Faber)
  • Will Eaves, The Absent Therapist (CB Editions)
  • Howard Jacobson, J (Jonathan Cape)
  • Paul Kingsnorth, The Wake (Unbound)
  • Zia Haider Rahman, In the Light of What We Know (Picador)
  • Ali Smith, How to be both (Hamish Hamilton)

First impressions… Half of the titles overlap with the Booker longlist, which surprises me – I was expecting (and, to be honest, hoping for) more divergence. The Kingsnorth (which is the only book of these that I’ve read) absolutely deserves to be here, and would be a worthy winner. From what I’ve heard about them, I can see the inclusion of the Smith, but am less persuaded about the Jacobson. Of the remaining three, I’m most interested in the Eaves, which I understand is written as a collage of fragments in different voices; the Cusk and Rahman, I’m undecided about. Overall, I have a nagging sense that this list is treading water a bit; it doesn’t feel as bold as I would hope. Still, there’s potential for another good result here.

Finally, a  call for volunteers: following on from shadowing the IFFP and Desmond Elliott Prize earlier in the year, I’ve been asked if I’d like to shadow the JQ-Wingate Prrze (“the only UK award to recognise writing by Jewish and non-Jewish writers that explore themes of Jewish concern in any of its myriad possible forms either explicitly or implicitly”). Would anyone like to take part? The timeframe would be from November (shortlist) to February (winner); six books, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, Anglophone or translated. Let me know if you’re interested!

BBC National Short Story Award 2013: the result

9th October 2013 / / 0 Comments

Last night, the 2013 BBC National Short Story Award was won by Sarah Hall for her story ‘Mrs Fox.; Lucy Wood was runner-up, for ‘Notes from the House Spirits’. It’s a good result, I think: Hall’s story, about a man whose relationship starts to break down when his wife undergoes a profound transformation (which may or may not be literal, for all the difference it makes), has a brilliant sense of wildness and mystery. I’ve already written about Wood’s tale in my review of Diving Belles; it was one of my favourite stories in her collection.

Actually, Hall’s and Wood’s were two of my three favourite stories on the Award shortlist (the third was ‘Barmouth’, Lisa Blower’s depiction of a woman’s life depicted through her caravan holidays, which creates a wonderful sense of time and place, and captures the melancholy of change). Interestingly, both the first- and second-place stories make use of the fantastic to explore personal concerns and notions of change. You can still pick up a copy of the Award anthology, which I’d suggest is well worth doing.

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