Tag: BBC National Short Story Award

BBC National Short Story Award 2013 shortlist

22nd September 2013 / / 1 Comment

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.

D.W. Wilson, ‘The Dead Roads’ (2010)

28th September 2011 / / 3 Comments

On to David Wilson’s winning story, which is now available to read on the Guardian website. It tells of a road trip taken across Canada by Duncan (our narrator), Vic (his girlfriend – when she’s not at university, at least), and their old school-friend Animal Brooks. Tensions build among the trio as Duncan realises that he might be about to lose Vic when she returns to university, where he can’t follow; and he starts to wonder, too, whether Animal is getting too close to Vic.

Out of all the shortlisted stories, I think this one creates the strongest atmosphere. There’s a wonderfully sharp edge to Wilson’s prose that complements the harsh bleakness of the setting. I’m particularly impressed with how the secondary characters leap off the page, even though Duncan’s voice is so strong itself; for example, I loved the initial description of Animal Brooks:

He was twenty-six and hunted looking, with engine-grease stubble and red eyes sunk past his cheekbones. In his commie hat and Converses he had that hurting lurch, like a scrapper’s swag, dragging foot after foot with his knees loose and his shoulders slumped. He’d drink a garden hose under the table if it looked at him wrong…

‘The Dead Roads’ is a deserving winner, to my mind, and makes me keen to read more of Wilson’s work. I see that he’s had a collection, Once You Break a Knuckle, published in Canada this month; I think it will be worth investigating.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

K.J. Orr, ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’ (2010)

28th September 2011 / / 1 Comment

The first of two entries on the shortlist by PhD students, Katherine Orr’s piece concerns Eleanor Francis, the British wife of an American astronaut freshly back from space. The couple’s opening exchange, as Eleanor greets her husband on his return, sets the tone for the rest of the story:

‘How are you?’ she said.

A lop-sided smile. ‘I’m A-OK.’

‘So what have you been up to?’

‘Stuff,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘Oh, stuff.’

All manner of possible sights and experiences are subsumed under the word ‘stuff’, as an indication that Eleanor and her husband (whose name we never learn) don’t know how to talk about what has happened. ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’ is an exploration of the ways in which the couple have become dislocated from life and each other. The rhythms of the astronaut’s body-clock are off, so he’s asleep in the daytime and awake at night; he also finds it easier to talk to his fellow-astronauts than to his wife (that Eleanor only knows his colleagues by their nicknames further emphasises her distance from that world). In her turn, the life Eleanor knew was disrupted when she had to move to the US; now that her husband has changed, she’s losing that one anchor she had. But, towards the end of the story, Eleanor finds a place and circumstance that may allow her to understand something of what her man has been through.

Orr handles her theme very well, right down to the fragmented structure of the narrative. The author’s biography in the back of the anthology says that she is working on a story collection; on the evidence of this piece, it should be interesting.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

Jon McGregor, ‘Wires’ (2011)

27th September 2011 / / 1 Comment

This is the second year running in which Jon McGregor has been shortlisted for the Award, which would be notable in itself; but, more than that, it’s also the second time in a row that has been runner-up. I very much liked McGregor’s nominated story last year; and he’s written another superb piece in this time around. ‘Wires’ is the story of a student named Emily Wilkinson who has an accident on the motorway when a sugar-beet smashes through her windscreen. Whilst waiting for the police to arrive, she dwells on her life, particularly her relationship with doctoral candidate Marcus, over which she has her doubts.

As with last year’s story, I’m struck by how completely McGregor evokes his protagonist’s mindset through his prose. The title of ‘Wires’ seemingly refers to neural pathways; and the rambling, jagged passages of narration evoke the feeling of a mind working than one can comprehend. Here, for example, is the opening of the story:

It was a sugar-beet, presumably, since that was a sugar-beet lorry in front of her and this thing turning in the air at something like sixty miles an hour had just fallen off it. It looked sort of like a giant turnip, and was covered in mud, and basically looked more or less like whatever she would have imagined a sugar-beet to look like if she’d given it any thought before now. Which she didn’t think she had. It was totally filthy. They didn’t make sugar out of that, did they? What did they do, grind it? Cook it?

All this and more goes through Emily’s mind before the sugar-beet even hits her car. Her thoughts flit from subject to subject in this way, with these lengthier passages punctuated by terser dialogue from the two men who saw Emily’s accident and have come to help; when they speak, the effect is of reality intruding in on the world of thought, in order to reassert itself.

McGregor also uses his narrative style to subtly suggest that maybe Emily hasn’t been left as unscathed by the incident as she had assumed. I’d say ‘Wires’ was a worthy runner-up, and will be interested to see how the winning story compares.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

Alison MacLeod, ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ (2011)

27th September 2011 / / 2 Comments

‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ was originally published in Litmus, an anthology of stories concerning key moments of scientific discovery. Denis Noble is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford, and pioneered virtual modelling of the human heart; he acted as an adviser to Alison MacLeod on the telling of this story, which sees a fictional Noble undergo a heart transplant, and dramatises episodes from the scientist’s earlier life and career.

I think this is a beautifully balanced piece of fiction. By turns, MacLeod’s prose has the precision of detail one would expect from a scientist’s viewpoint; and some wonderfully poetic moments, such as this, describing Noble’s earliest development:

Soon, the tube that was Denis Noble’s heart, a delicate scrap of mesoderm, would push towards life. In the dark of Ethel [Noble’s mother], it would twist and grope, looping blindly back towards itself in the primitive knowledge that circulation, the vital whoosh of life, deplores a straight line.

The story conveys both a sense of the demanding nature of Noble’s work (the computer he needs to use is only available between two and four in the morning, then it’s off to the slaughterhouse to buy a couple of sheeps’ hearts, before a twelve-hour day in the lab), and the scientist’s frustration at not being able to apprehend the true nature of love, for all his knowledge (“Where, he’d like to know, is love? How is love?”).

I could see this piece as an award-winner. Certainly it sets the bar high for the eventual runner-up and winner, both of which I’ve yet to read.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

M.J. Hyland, ‘Rag Love’ (2010)

27th September 2011 / / 1 Comment

In 1960s Sydney, James Brailey (if that is his real name; it’s never confirmed) and his partner Trudy attempt to trick or bribe their way into a penthouse cabin on board the SS Oriana, so they can live out their fantasy of luxury for a short while, before the liner leaves port. I say ‘their’ fantasy, but it’s really Trudy’s; James has gone along with her dream because he loves her, even though he knows they can’t really afford the money they’re using as a bribe.

This is what M.J. Hyland does particularly well in ‘Rag Love’: to show that this act of apparently throwing cares to the wind masks a relationship under strain. James has doubts about Trudy’s feelings for him (“I was certain she’d want the money and the ocean cruise no matter what bloke she was with”), and Trudy seems to have little concern for anything beyond her immediate dream. That then sets up a tension over not only whether the couple’s plan will succeed, but also what will happen to their relationship with each other. I’m not sure that Hyland’s piece quite has the extra spark I’d hope to see from a story on an award shortlist, but it’s a good read nonetheless.

This is one of a series of posts reviewing the shortlist for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award. Click here to read my other posts on the Award.

The BBC National Short Story Award 2011

27th September 2011 / / 7 Comments

Last night, 26-year-old David Wilson became the youngest-ever winner of the BBC National Short Story Award for his piece ‘The Dead Roads’. The five shortlisted stories were all broadcast on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago (which, unfortunately, I missed); but now this year’s Award anthology has been launched, so now we have the chance to read them all. And, over the next couple of days, that’s just what I’m going to do.

First of all, an index:

The tiles above will become links as I review each story — three today, and the remaining two tomorrow. I’ll be working through the shortlist in alphabetical order of author, which means of course that I’ll get to the winner last (which should provide an interesting contrast to the experience of reading last year’s shortlist, where the winner came first alphabetically).

Enough preamble; off we go…

Further links
Podcasts of the shortlisted stories
The Award at BBC Radio 4
The Award at Booktrust
Comma Press, publishers of the anthology

BBC National Short Story Award 2011 shortlist

9th September 2011 / / 5 Comments

The shortlist for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award has been announced:

  • M.J. Hyland, ‘Rag Love’
  • Alison MacLeod, ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’
  • Jon McGregor, ‘Wires’
  • K.J. Orr, ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’
  • D.W. Wilson, ‘The Dead Roads’

My initial thoughts? I enjoyed Jon McGregor’s shortlisted story last year, and the Alison MacLeod collection I read a few months ago. I’ve read M.J. Hyland before, but it’s been a long time since; the other two authors are unknown to me. If the standard of this year’s shortlist is anything like last year’s, we’re in for a treat; the signs are good as far as I can see.

BBC Radio 4 are broadcasting each shortlisted story at 3.30pm (BST) on consecutive days from Monday 12th, with the winner to be announced on Monday 26th September.

BBC National Short Story Award: Conclusion

21st December 2010 / / 1 Comment

So, that’s the entire shortlist blogged. The first thing to say is that the judges put together a very good list; certainly I wouldn’t begrudge any of the five stories their place. David Constantine was the winner, but, for me, it would come down to a choice between the stories by Aminatta Forna and Jon McGregor. And, much as I appreciate the subtlety of McGregor’s psychological portrait, I think the elegance and economy of Forna’s telling gives her story the edge.

Helen Oyeyemi, ‘My Daughter the Racist’ (2010)

21st December 2010 / / 5 Comments

At the start of this story, the protagonist’s eight-year-old daughter announces that, from now on, she is going to be racist — against soldiers, that is, their country being occupied by foreign troops. The woman lost her husband in a bombing, and now lives with his mother in her village, where she is the object of unwanted advances from a villager named Bilal. One day, her daughter stands up to a group of soldiers, which so impresses one that he starts to visit. But the woman’s attempts to come to some sort of mutual understanding with the soldier are misinterpreted by the village as lustful intentions.

The sense I gain of Oyeyemi’s protagonist is of a woman feeling the pressure of expectation from many sides — her daughter, her husband’s mother, Bilal, the villagers — and trying her best to steer a course through it all. I like the complexity of the picture that Oyeyemi paints: the villagers have their flaws; the soldier is neither a stereotype of badness nor a stereotype of badness-suddenly-turned-good; the daughter changes her opinion of the soldiers in the fluid way that young children can. The woman is ultimately forced into a situation she doesn’t really want to be in, try though she may to make light of it. All is delineated well by Oyeyemi, and it makes me look forward to her story collection next year with anticipation.

EDIT: I’m not sure where I got the impression that Oyeyemi would be releasing a story collection in 2011, but she won’t be doing so after all.

ANOTHER EDIT, JUNE 2011: Perhaps I wasn’t entirely wrong to begin with; see my review of Mr Fox.

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