This is the eighth year in a row in which I’m making a special effort to read short stories in September; otherwise, story collections tend to languish on my shelves (and Kindle) unread. In September 2021 I read 12 collections and in September 2022 it was 11.5; let’s see how many I get to this year!
As someone who doesn’t claim to love short stories, I was surprised to see that I’ve already read 19 collections this year. Some of the highlights have been Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood, How Strange a Season by Megan Mayhew Bergman, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver, Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny, and Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain.
I have a whole shelf of short story options set out for me and will make my selections from there. For now, I have brief reviews of two collections I read during a quick trip to the USA.
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom (2000)
My second collection by Bloom this year, after Where the God of Love Hangs Out; somewhat confusingly, the latter reprints two of this volume’s Lionel and Julia stories, so there were actually only six stories here that were new to me (5 x first-person; 3 x third-person). However, they’re all typically great ones. The title story has a mother accompanying her daughter to the medical appointments that will transform Jessie into Jess, her son, and also taking a chance on romance. “Rowing to Eden” explores the dynamic between best friends, one lesbian and one married to a man; the one has already been through breast cancer treatment so can counsel her friend from experience.
In “Stars at Elbow and Foot,” a woman whose baby died goes back to the children’s hospital to volunteer with the disabled. “Hold Tight” also reflects on loss and accidents (but is probably the throw-away story if I had to name one). “The Story,” which closes the book, had me hunting for autobiographical correlations what with its mentions of “Amy.” By far my favourite was “The Gates Are Closing,” in which D.M. is having an affair with the synagogue president’s husband, who has Parkinson’s disease. As Yom Kippur approaches, he gives his mistress an ultimatum. The minor assisted dying theme in this one felt ironically prescient of Bloom’s own experience accompanying her husband to Dignitas (the subject of In Love). As always, Bloom’s work is sensual, wry and emotionally wise. 
Canoes by Maylis de Kerangal (2021; 2023)
[Translated from the French by Jessica Moore]
These eight stories are all in the first person; although I tend to prefer more diversity of narration, the plots are so dissimilar that it makes up for that homogeneity. In an author’s note at the end, de Kerangal writes that her overall theme was voices, especially women’s voices; perhaps ironically, then, the collection uses no speech marks. In “Mountain Stream and Iron Filings,” the narrator’s friend Zoé is on a mission to lower her voice to make it more suitable for radio. “Nevermore” has a woman contributing a recording of herself reading Edgar Allan Poe’s epic poem “The Raven” to an audio library. “A Light Bird,” which I found particularly poignant, is about a widower and his daughter deciding what to do about their late wife’s/mother’s voice on the answering machine.
“After” has a school leaver partying and figuring out what comes next, “Ontario” revolves around a trip to Canada, and “Arianespace” has an investigator visiting an elderly woman who has reported a UFO sighting. The longest story (billed as a novella), “Mustang,” focuses on a French family that has relocated to Colorado in the 1990s. The mother, recently bereaved, learns to drive their rather impractical American car.
Like Painting Time, the collection is in thrall to questions of deep time. This is clearest in “Bivouac,” in which a woman undergoes a procedure while the dentist tells her about an ancient human jawbone found deep under Paris. Prehistory is even present in the metaphorical language: “the first foothills of the Rockies sketched the backbone of a sleepy stegosaurus who’d escaped extinction” (from “Mustang”). Each story also mentions a canoe, if only in passing (e.g., the dentist’s necklace charm in the first story).
As was my main quibble with Mend the Living, though, de Kerangal is all too fond of arcane vocabulary. I mean, she uses “alveolar” twice in this very short book; there’s also “sagittal slices” and “sinuous mnemic circuits.” Some sentences stretch to fill two-plus pages. So overwriting is a recurrent issue I have with her work, but I would certainly recommend that her fans read her short fiction, which I found more accessible than her novels. 
With thanks to MacLehose Press for the free copy for review. Canoes will be published on 28 September.
Currently reading: Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan; I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle; The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff; Why I Don’t Write by Susan Minot; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro; The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer (linked stories); Small, Burning Things by Cathy Ulrich.
Resuming soon: The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards; If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (I read the first two stories ages ago, but its longlisting for the Booker Prize is the impetus I need to pick it back up); Hey Yeah Right Get a Life by Helen Simpson.
Are you a short story fan? Read any good ones recently?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Oh, the Bloom collection sounds great! It sounds like it has a bit of a medical theme which I like.
I struggled with Mend the Living so I’ll be skipping the de Kerangal.
Hateship… etc was the first collection I read by Munro and I remember really enjoying it,
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I can’t decide if you’d like Amy Bloom or if you’d find her too similar to Anne Tyler et al. for the family dysfunction theme. She reminds me more of Lorrie Moore, though.
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I used to confuse her and Lorrie Moore, for several years!
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I can see why that would happen! Though both are psychologically astute, Bloom is the one who is actually a psychotherapist 😉
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Mend the Living is one of my favourite books of all time, and I loved Birth of a Bridge too. Somehow I haven’t read anything else by her, but I’ll give these short stories a go. I always claim not to be a short story fan, but I generally enjoy them when I get over myself and choose a collection to read.
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One for you for sure, then!
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The Bloom collection was the first of her writing I read and I loved it despite not being keen on short stories at the time. Reviewing Canoes it a few weeks.
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I have you to thank for putting Canoes on my radar.
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Need to read that Bloom collection! And also thanks for the reminder about Sidle Creek–right up my Rust Belt alley, maybe.
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Hope you love them both if you get to read them.
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19 collections! That’s amazing.
I am curious: how do you remind yourself of all the challenges and “reading months” of the year – do you have a reminder set on your phone, or write them on a calendar or something? It seems like you participate in so many bookish events all year long.
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I still have a “dumb phone,” so my planning is all in a Word file saved on my desktop. I note down monthly events like Six Degrees and Love Your Library and annual ones like 20 Books of Summer and Novellas in November, and then list the books I know I need to review and other thematic posts I want to work on. It’s pretty low tech but helps me with scheduling.
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P.S. This is definitely only a challenge-to-self. I’ve never tried to make it a thing people join in on (though they’re welcome to!).
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I love a good short story and I love Brautigan, so I really should dig out Revenge of the Lawn for a re-read!!
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Bizarre flash fiction stories! A few have felt throwaway, but there are some really memorable ones too.
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I’ve read the Munro and I do like her short stories even though I’m not a fan of the form particularly.
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Interesting! Did you have a period of reading lots of CanLit?
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I’m not sure; I think I had a period of buying lots of books from the book stall / shop in Greenwich Market and ended up reading a lot of Fabers / Penguins / Abacuses (Abacii?) from there.
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I’ve only read two this year, and both earlier… it’s time! I love that title “Hey Yeah Right Get a Life”.
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(I love it too!) Which ones have you read so far?
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I love Helen Simpson’s stories (I know, I’ve said this before). And I’ve already asked, in the comment you left on BIP recently, about where to begin with these French stories (I’ll ILL that title). I’ve read a lot of collections this year and was recently pondering (but only for a moment, because I could ponder for ages about similar questions) what to do about my quarterly short story posts for this year, there were so many really satisfying and solid collections, I’d like to share the details, but hmmm). I hope you’ve got lots more great stories ahead of you this September.
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This is my sixth of her collections, so I’m definitely a fan!
Hmm, it depends what number of collections we’re talking about. Short fiction highlights split across 2-3 posts, with a paragraph on each?
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[…] who feels like she hardly ever reads stories and doesn’t seek them out. This year’s reviews are here, here and […]
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[…] was previously published in Come to Me; another that gives the title line to her 2000 collection A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You) about Elizabeth Taube. When we first meet her on Long Island in the 1960s, she’s a rebellious […]
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