#ShortStorySeptember, Meet #RIPXXI: Fremlin, M.R. James & Navarro
I can hardly believe it’s October; I still have a bunch of short stories to finish and review! I’m taking the opportunity to start on Readers Imbibing Peril with these three collections that crank up the suspense with their scenes of the unexplained.
Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin (1970)
(Faber reprint: 2024)
I wasn’t wild about Fremlin’s Uncle Paul, but these 13 stories were terrific. Nightmares sometimes become reality as children and women of a certain age face up to threats, whether concrete or imaginary. The twist endings can reassure or unsettle, but in either case they call into question the tenor of what’s gone before. Only three tales are in the first person, with the other 10 in an authoritative third person. The need to protect children is a recurring impulse, ageing is a frequent cause of angst, and there are a couple of instances of frightening bird imagery (a nod to du Maurier?). There are also tweaks of horror story tropes – the haunted house in “The Hated House” and “The Locked Room.” Visual and auditory clues ramp up the tension. I’ll highlight a couple of favourites: “The Quiet Game,” in which a mother’s mental illness has dangerous implications for her twins; and “The Baby-Sitter,” about a little girl who’s afraid of The Hen with Great Big Eyes and her child-minder, who’s lived out her own horrors as a European refugee. This one is a fine example of how Fremlin mixes the everyday with suggestions of the supernatural. (Little Free Library) 
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: A Graphic Collection of Short Stories by M.R. James, Volume I (2016)
(Adapted by Leah Moore and John Reppion)
(I reviewed Volume II in 2017.) Though all retold by the same duo, these four stories are each illustrated by a different artist. So although the setup and voice tends to be samey – a dignified man investigating strange happenings at a country house – the art style varies significantly While I didn’t care for the approach in the first two (“Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” – Marvel; “Lost Hearts” – Pixar), the others, “The Mezzotint” and “The Ash-tree,” made up for it. I liked the monochrome palette, gentlemen detecting vibe, and Wildean mark of a morphing image of the former. In the latter, a Gothic setting and a history of suppressing witchcraft pave the way for unnatural spectacles. James’s classic ghost stories have been hugely influential on the likes of Susan Hill. (I also wondered if Stephen King borrowed the girl in the bath from “Lost Hearts” for The Shining.) Still, my conclusion about the second volume stands for the whole project: the “problem with using the graphic form for … tales that center around nameless horror is that depicting [what is feared] saps it of its power.” 
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy of The Compendium (Volumes I and II) for review.
Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard by Elvira Navarro (2025; 2026)
[Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney]
My introduction to Navarro, a Spanish author, reminded me most of Agustina Bazterrica’s 19 Claws and a Black Bird. These nine stories are full of derelict buildings, outsider characters, and traces of the uncanny. Seven are in the third person and two in first. A nice touch: two stories are linked in that they feature Almudena, who is studying in Paris. “The Fear of the City” is, we realize, the story she wrote about femicide, as mentioned, fittingly, in “The City of Fear.” “Idiotic Love” is narrated by a trans woman with an anal fissure and conjures a seedy world of nightclubs and sex shops. This was the longest story and not a pleasant one. There were just three standouts for me. In “The Washing Machine,” which contains the title line, a couple’s appliance keeps filling with blood for no reason. “The Animal Collector” is a tough one for animal lovers because of all the injuries and deaths, but the idea of a highway maintenance man assembling a makeshift zoo for his roadside rescues is alluring. Eventually, he becomes overwhelmed and compassion turns into a burden. In “A Small Bunch of Violets,” Mari chooses a new ornament for her father’s grave during a heat wave, but the flowers keep being displaced. There were too many so-so stories, though.
With thanks to Two Lines Press and publicist Nicolette Praça for the proof copy for review.
#ShortStorySeptember Round-Up with Statistics
Thank you for joining in and making this second year of Short Story September such a success! In total, 25 bloggers contributed 74 posts, including planning posts and book lists plus reviews that together covered 35 individual stories and 47 whole collections (and a bonus biography of a short story writer).
If you want to take a look back at the link parties, they are here and here.
The authors covered more than once this year were Celia Fremlin and W. Somerset Maugham; the only book reviewed more than once (certain stories, at least) was Vampire Tales, a good lead into R.I.P.
As always, I bit off much more than I could chew and I’m still making my way through a number of collections and single stories. For my benefit, if no one else’s, the link party will stay open (and the opening post pinned on my site) through 6 October. I’ll come back and update the final statistics as well.
New to My TBR in #ShortStorySeptember
I’m still frantically trying to finish the multiple short story collections on my stack, but there’s always room for more on the TBR!
This month I discovered (and promptly ordered secondhand):
- Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (via Lisa of Hopewell’s Public Library of Life), a collection about the South Asian immigrant experience that I thought could be a good follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies
- Alice by Judith Hermann (via Brona of This Reading Life), linked short stories that would also count towards German Literature Month in November
It’s been a while since I’ve read anything of Tom Cox’s, but I loved the description in Jan’s review (at What I Think About When I Think About Reading) of his new collection, Curious Events Lately Occurring in This Neighbourhood, as “a sketch show” with “a certain skewed perception, a certain willingness to embrace the surreal.” I’m also always partial to flash fiction, too, which this is at least in part.
I came across Roald Dahl’s short stories for grown-ups through Cathy’s review of Kiss, Kiss at 746 Books and will borrow his collected stories from the university library for next year’s challenge.
I am really enjoying a different spooky collection of Celia Fremlin’s at the moment, so I will have to source By Horror Haunted (reviewed by Helen at She Reads Novels).
Diana’s review of multiple collections by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky at Thoughts on Papyrus piqued my interest and I managed to find one story, “Quadraturin,” with the full text online to read another time.
Both Nancy Elin and Rose featured a selection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham; Rose even said she thinks his stories are better than his novels, so I know I’ve got to read some. I have the volume Creatures of Circumstance, and can access others from the public library.
Last month I earned a £70 voucher for doing a Teams call about my reading and book-buying habits with a UX researcher at Awesomebooks.com (she didn’t know what she was in for!) – my favourite place to buy secondhand books online – and spent it at the weekend. I have two new copies on the way as part of that big order, one of which is a collection of uncanny stories that I’ve had in my sights ever since I first heard about it: The Good Eye by Jess Gibson, Margaret Atwood’s daughter. I will plan to read it as part of Margaret Atwood Reading Month in November.
Have you discovered any new stories or collections this month?
#ShortStorySeptember: “Death in Midsummer” by Yukio Mishima (1952; 1966)
Tomoko Ikuta is on a beach vacation with her three children and sister-in-law, Yasue, who is their de facto nanny and housekeeper. The trip soon turns nightmarish when three family members die in quick succession.
{BEWARE SPOILERS IN THE REMAINDER}
Tomoko is taking a well-deserved nap to escape the punishing sun. Yasue is an attentive babysitter who has already chased after the children and warned them about going any deeper. She’s barely looked away for a second when the six-year-old boy, Kiyoo, and five-year-old girl, Keiko, disappear. Yasue runs into the ocean to find them and is hit by a massive wave that seems to trigger a heart attack. In the ensuing chaos, the missing children are forgotten – even by Tomoko – until it’s far too late.
All of the above happens within the first six pages; the rest is aftermath. The idyllic setting introduced in the story’s first few paragraphs (the beach “unspoiled for sea bathing,” the hotel’s “beautiful” view, the placid image of the mother asleep) feels like mockery when set against the “ridiculous” and “excessive” tragedy that has befallen the family. The husband, Masaru, on the train from Tokyo to join his diminished kin, wishes he could “shout at the other passengers: ‘Listen, everybody. You don’t know it, but I have just lost my sister and two of my three children.” The season itself seems to have betrayed them: “If only summer would end. The very word ‘summer’ carried with it festering thoughts of death.”
Mishima’s vision is of fate as cruel and capricious. As the bereaved parents undertake the necessary funeral preparations, he explores the practicalities and the ironies of the situation:
A death is always a problem in administration. They were frantically busy administering.
Tomoko listened to the subdued humming of the autumn cicadas, and smelled the incense and the cool, shady grass. ‘What a nice place. They’ll have room to play, and they won’t be bored. I can’t help thinking it will be good for them. Strange, isn’t it?’
She’s found a perfect, peaceful spot for her children to spend eternity, since they’ll never get to grow up.
As time passes, the memory of the incident is less painful. What had been unbearable becomes simple reality. But then something curious happens. One family’s losses take on legendary status, transformed into a widespread cautionary tale:
Rather than an injury it became a moral lesson, and it changed from a concrete fact to a metaphor. It was no longer the property of the Ikuta family, it was public. … You have to watch children constantly when you take them to the beach. People drown where you would never think it possible. Not that Masaru and his wife had sacrificed two children and a sister to teach a lesson. The loss of the three had served no other purpose, however; and many a heroic death produces as little.
Yet Mishima also extends an opportunity for redemption when, two years later, the couple returns to the same beach with their remaining son, five-year-old Katsuo, and their new daughter, Momoko. It’s an act of faith and an acceptance that danger is always present and that no parent, however protective, can completely eliminate risk. By inscribing a full circle like that, Mishima emphasizes the severity of the loss but also somehow atones for it.
I found this story so powerful – emotionally charged but understated – that I’m surprised I’d not come across it before in my constant quest to find the best classic grief literature. At 29 pages, it feels just right; a note at the end mentions that it was abridged by translator Edward G. Seidensticker. I’ll be sure to try more by Mishima.
From Death in Midsummer and Other Stories (1966) (Secondhand – Better World Books)
#ShortStorySeptember: Single Stories by Barnes, Bellow, Enright, P. Fitzgerald, Mackay, and Norman
Thanks for all the contributions to Short Story September thus far! I usually review whole collections, but today I’m highlighting individual stories I read either as stand-alones, in an unrelated volume, or as a taster from a book I might finish some other time. A few really surprised me for being so dissimilar to other work by the author. These six seem to illustrate different techniques or situations that short stories are good at exploring, thus my headings. (Beware mild spoilers in most of these brief responses.)
The Pastiche
“Homage to Hemingway” by Julian Barnes (2011)
[from Through the Window]
The protagonist is a literature instructor and failed novelist whom we see undertaking three different teaching gigs (in rural Wales, the Alps, and the American Midwest), like the triptych of expatriate Americans waiting for trains in Hemingway’s “Homage to Switzerland,” which is specifically referenced here. He believes fiction is “omnivorous and essentially amoral” and hopes to inspire his students to “reflect on life’s influence on art, and then art’s influence back on life.” This is, of course, a huge theme across Barnes’s oeuvre. Luckily, Barnes doesn’t attempt mimicry of Hemingway’s style, which really wouldn’t suit him at all, but I enjoyed the barbs his students throw. For example, Kate describes Hemingway as “the ultimate dead white male … celebration of machismo. Boys with toys.” This wasn’t very memorable but has me hankering to track down and reread Barnes’s full-length story collections. (Public library)
The Character Study
“Leaving the Yellow House” by Saul Bellow (1958)
[Penguin Modern: 36]
I wouldn’t have recognized this as Bellow’s writing were his name not on the cover. I think of him as a chronicle of Jewish city-dwellers; this is the story of a woman in a tiny town in the American West. Everyone in Sego Desert Lake knows that Hattie is an alcoholic. She’s now in her early seventies and pretty much has bourbon running through her veins. When she gets her car stuck on train tracks while driving drunk and breaks her arm in the ensuing kerfuffle, she and her acquaintances are forced to think seriously about what’s going to happen to her. She looks back on her two marriages and her relationship with India, who used to own her house – I never did work out who India was to her; a friend? an employer? – as she sets to the task of writing her will. Who deserves to have the house in turn? The title has a double meaning and also points to the final leave-taking of death. Hattie is not a very likeable character but has a certain admirable dignity, like Olive Kitteridge or Hagar in The Stone Angel. I liked her fancy that her whole life has been filmed and she’ll soon be able to revisit any moment she chooses. A melancholy slice of mid-century Americana. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
The Shock Ending
“Pillow” by Anne Enright (2008)
[from Taking Pictures]
Alison, from Ireland, is part of a set of international roommates at her American college. Li is always asking her questions about what things mean or how they work. The first lines have her querying “What is a homosexual?” With this Enright sets us up to think that Li has a crush on Alison. First, the roommates find out that Li is her surname and really they should call her Ping. And then one morning Alison wakes up struggling to breathe because Ping is trying to smother her with the title object. I gasped aloud! The incident seems to come out of nowhere but I guess illustrates how easy it can be to hide mental illness. I kind of wish it wasn’t the Chinese girl who ended up being unstable, though. I’m not sure short stories are where Enright shines; I read the first two stories in this volume but won’t finish it. (Public library)
The Visual Pun
“The Axe” by Penelope Fitzgerald (1975)
[from The Means of Escape]
An office worker recalls having to make redundancies, including of his dignified clerical assistant, W. S. Singlebury. He feels even worse about it when the man invites him to visit his home. This faux report to the Company boss chronicles a growing sense of unease as he returns to work and finds the fired man still in the office, gruesomely injured and leaking blood all over. Fitzgerald has playfully imagined Singlebury getting the axe, literally, and then haunting the man responsible. I’ve never experienced such gleeful mischief from Fitzgerald – I only knew her austere historical novellas – but sure enough, this originally appeared in The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
The Family Drama in Miniature
“The Worlds Smallest Unicorn” by Shena Mackay (1999)
[from The Worlds Smallest Unicorn and Other Stories]
Fan’s brother-in-law, Teddy, has just returned from Hong Kong and she’s not happy about it: “now here was this succubus squatting in her kitchen, expecting to be fed.” She sees in the newspaper that an old flame of his, a singer, has died and he sets out for the funeral, passing a circus billet advertising the title act. (Since it reproduces what was on the tacky poster, I can let Mackay off for the grammatical gaffe, though it doth offend the eyes!) It seems to be a metaphor for anything that’s too good to be true, such as Fan’s affair with Teddy years ago. Her adolescent daughters’ banter and the South London environs are highlights in this one, but so far the book is not living up to the collection I read by Mackay last year, Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags. (Secondhand – Slightly Foxed, Berwick)
The Relationship Study
“Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad” by Howard Norman (1989)
[from Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad]
The narrator is dishonourably discharged from Canada’s air force for faking an emergency beach landing during a practice flight in 1943. “We’ve come up with a new, Asshole category,” the colonel declares as he dismisses him. Still, this amiable joker hopes his pluck will endear him to Imogene Linny, who has a kissing booth for would-be soldiers on the Halifax wharf. She recognizes him from his prank and says, “You can kiss something, but it ain’t, I guarantee you, my lips.” In the two decades that follow, he keeps tabs on Imogene as she marries into a hotel empire and he works on the greyhound tracks. After all, he paid his dollar at that booth but never got his kiss. This could have gone creepy but Norman keeps it quirky and sweet instead. His novels, too, often feature Atlantic Canada, oddballs, and hotels. (Secondhand – Hay Cinema Bookshop)
Are any of these authors, and their stories, familiar to you?
Which of these six story types do you prefer?
My Year in Short Stories (#ShortStorySeptember)
The Short Story September link-up is open (see my pinned post). At the start of the month, I’m inviting you to tell about the short stories you’ve already read this year, especially any that you’ve particularly enjoyed.
I don’t consider myself a great short story reader, so I was surprised to look back and find that I’ve already read 17 collections this year. I include in that four books that I consider to be linked short story collections, even though they were all published as novels rather than stories. (I’m sure Susan is right when she theorizes that this is about marketing – what’s expected to sell.) The best have been Brawler by Lauren Groff and Nightjar by Emily Ruskovich, which are actually quite similar.
Some other favourites were:
The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain: A slantwise biographical portrait of Sylvia Plath through her interactions in the last years of her life. The 16 chapters adopt the points-of-view of various secondary characters (e.g., Plath’s housekeeper, riding teacher, and brother), but the kernel of each is an encounter with Plath that illuminates her personality and state of mind. (Reviewed for Shelf Awareness)
Strange Weather in Tokyo
by Hiromi Kawakami: Tsukiko is a lonely barfly in her late thirties when she bumps into a secondary school teacher again. She calls him “Sensei,” and they start meeting up for low-key adventures. Kawakami infuses the book with attention to the seasons’ changes and everyday sensual pleasures like food. A lovely, subtle romance.
Ladies, Ladies, Ladies by Kristen Zory King: A “chapbook” containing 18 flash stories. It’s remarkable how much is packed into a few pages: a voice, a character, a setting and situation, an incident, a salient backstory, and some kind of epiphany or resolution. Fifteen of the pieces focus on one named character. Each story is distinctive, with no words wasted.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: Lahiri won the Pulitzer for this debut. Her characters tend to be Indian or Bengali immigrants in New England. Relationship studies trade off with accounts of encounters with strangers across generations and/or cultures. Often, food is a reminder of home. An overall theme is denying or affirming common humanity.
Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer: In Orringer’s wonderful third novel, the secrets between two literature professors and the adoption of a remarkable dog fuel an absorbing story of love, memory, and connection beyond words. Chapters take on different characters’ perspectives. (Review forthcoming for Shelf Awareness)
The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki: Ozeki is up to her usual auto/metafiction tricks here, blurring the lines between fact and fiction, life and death. Themes include memory, creativity, language, ageing and cross-generation connections. The stories are playful without being twee, and represent a real return to form.
I Am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek: The television producer’s inventive debut recalls Ed Park and George Saunders with its focus on the mixed blessing of technology. Her speculative short stories’ protagonists deal with grief or new motherhood, often while also struggling with their health. Samek sets up unusual situations with knock-out first lines. (Reviewed for BookBrowse)
The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman: A remarkable collection that mixes feminist horror and twisted fairy tales into potent concoctions. Women’s bodies are imperiled by sadistic men and acts of self-sacrifice. Blood is a symbol of desire or power. Motherhood and sisterhood are vital bonds. Among bleak storylines come flashes of morbid humor. (Reviewed for Foreword Reviews)
All by women!
And the rest:
- Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom
- Baby in a Box by Sarah Braunstein (Reviewed for BookBrowse)
- A Calendar of Love and Other Stories by George Mackay Brown
- Museum Visits by Éric Chevillard
- Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
- It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories by Sigrid Nunez
- The Book of Mating by Laksmi Pamuntjak [trans. from Indonesian by Annie Tucker] (Review forthcoming for Foreword Reviews)
(All but two by women!)
What are some of your recent favorite experiences with short fiction?
Welcome to Short Story September! (#ShortStorySeptember)
Join me in celebrating the art of the short story this month! Simply read one or more individual stories (or collections) and share your review by adding a blog post or social media post to the InLinkz party below. (Or paste a link in a comment and I can add it for you.)
You can find more information about the challenge here. This post will be pinned to the top of my blog, and at the end of the month I will post a recap of what everyone has reviewed.
(The first batch of 50 links is here.)
#ShortStorySeptember Reading Options
It’s a little over a week now until Short Story September begins. I’ve been gathering potential reads, mostly from my own shelves. I used to have a dedicated short story shelf, but earlier this year interfiled everything into an alphabetical fiction sequence. When I went hunting through to pick out the story collections, they were more numerous than I expected! I recreated a temporary short story shelf (below), but it ended up overflowing…
I also earmarked a few books I wouldn’t mind rereading (left-hand stack). In the few cases where I have more than one option by the same author, I’ve pulled out the extras (middle stack). And I have a couple that would do double duty for R.I.P. (right-hand stack), which technically starts in September, though I usually don’t feel like reading for that challenge until closer to Halloween.
Here’s a library pile I assembled last week, another R.I.P.-suitable read that I’m partway through, and two late additions from a secondhand book haul.
But wait, there’s more! Here are some of the options on my e-readers:
My overall aim will be to cover a variety of time periods and styles, as well as author nationalities and genders.
Particularly for the classics and longer Collected/Selected volumes (Barnes, de Maupassant, Forster, Frame, Lawrence, Mansfield, Maugham, Porter, Williamson), I will probably choose just one renowned story to review.
I wanted to get ahead, so I’m now stuck into six collections already!
Spy anything that you have read and can recommend?
What have you got lined up for next month?
Short Story September Is Coming Soon!
Every September I make a special effort to get to more of the short fiction on my shelves, e-readers, and library catalogue. Last year, Lisa of ANZ LitLovers launched Short Story September as a proper blogger challenge and I had great fun taking part. This year her health does not allow her to host*, so I’m stepping in; apologies for the last-minute announcement.
Lisa encouraged people to choose particular short stories that they would recommend. You may want to review individual stories – from anthologies or literary magazines, for instance – instead of or in addition to entire collections.
I’m going to keep it all quite simple so there’s more time for reading and less taken up by blog admin. My plan is as follows; feel free to join in with the prompts in bold, which always serve as handy ways to top and tail a challenge month:
- 24 August: Planning post for Short Story September – Photographs of my potential reads
- 1 September: Opening post with InLinkz link-up (pinned to my site throughout the month)
- 4 September: My Year in Short Stories – Looking back at the collections I’ve already read in 2026, with mini-reviews of some stand-outs.
~Reviews of various collections and individual stories through the month~
- 28 September: New to My TBR – Short stories and authors I’ve discovered through this year’s challenge
- 30 September: Round-up of your links, with statistics on the number of authors and books featured and any stories that were discussed multiple times
- 7 October: The link-up will stay open for another week to mop up any late entries, which I will also add in to the round-up post.
I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the art of the short story next month. The hashtag is #ShortStorySeptember and the badge is above. I’m on Bluesky (@bookishbeck.bsky.social) and Instagram (@bookishbeck) but likely to miss social media posts, so do also add your post to the InLinkz party and/or paste a link in a comment on the opening post.
*Please send Lisa all your warm get-well wishes!
Many thanks to Kim of Reading Matters for the use of her logo design.
Short Story Catch-Up: Carver, Cunningham, Park, Polders, Racket, Schweblin, Williams (& Heti Stand-Alone)
I actually read 15 collections in total for Short Story September. I’m finally catching up on reviews, though I’m aware that I’ve missed out on Lisa’s link-up. (My other reviews: Heiny, Mackay, McEwan; the BBC National Short Story Award 2025 anthology; Donoghue, Grass, Isherwood, Mansfield as part of my Germany reading.) To keep it simple and get the basics across before I forget any more about these books, I’ll post some shorthand notes under headings.
Cathedral by Raymond Carver (1983)
Why I read it:
- I’d really enjoyed What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.
- This fits into my project to read books from my birth year.
Stats: 12 stories (6 x 1st-person, 6 x 3rd-person)
Themes: alcoholism, adultery, fatherhood, crap jobs, crumbling families
Tone: melancholy, laconic
File under: grit-lit
For fans of: John Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, Denis Johnson
Caveat(s): It doesn’t match What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.
If you read just one story, make it: “A Small, Good Thing”
(University library) 
A Wild Swan and Other Tales by Michael Cunningham (2015)
Why I read it:
- I have a vague plan to read through Cunningham’s whole oeuvre.
- This one is different to his others, and beautifully illustrated by Yuko Shimizu.
Stats: 11 stories (3 x 2nd-person, 8 x 3rd-person)
Themes: coming of age, longing, loss, bargaining
Tone: witty, knowing
File under: fairy tale updates
For fans of: Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman
Caveat(s): For the most part, he doesn’t do anything interesting with the story lines.
If you read just one story, make it: “Little Man” (the Rumpelstiltskin remake)
(Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com) 
An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park (2025)
Why I read it:
- I’d heard buzz, probably because Park was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his novel.
Stats: 16 stories (12 x 1st-person, 1 x 1st-person plural, 1 x 2nd-person, 2 x 3rd-person)
Themes: the Asian American and university experience, writing, translation, aphorisms
Tone: jokey, nostalgic
File under: dystopian fiction, metafiction
For fans of: George Saunders
Caveat(s): There’s more intellectual experimentation than emotional engagement.
If you read just one story, make it: “An Accurate Account”
(Read via NetGalley)
Woman of the Hour by Clare Polders (2025)
Why I read it:
- I always like to sneak at least one flash fiction collection in for this challenge.
Stats: 50 stories, a mixture of 1st- and 3rd-person
Themes: childhood, sexuality, motherhood, choices vs. fate
Tone: sharp, matter-of-fact
File under: feminist, satire
For fans of: Claire Fuller, Terese Svoboda
Caveat(s): There’s too many stories to keep track of and not enough stand-outs.
If you read just one story, make it: “Woman of the Hour”
(BookSirens)
Racket: New Writing Made in Newfoundland, ed. Lisa Moore (2015)
Why I read it:
- Naomi’s blog always whets my appetite for Atlantic Canadian fiction, but I’m rarely able to find it over here.
Stats: 11 stories, mostly by Memorial University creative writing graduates (7 x 1st-person, 1 x 2nd-person, 3 x 3rd-person)
Themes: mental health, bereavement, tragic accidents
Tone: jaunty, reflective
File under: voice-y early-2000s lit-fic
For fans of: Sharon Bala (her story is among the best here), Jonathan Safran Foer; hockey
Caveat(s): I wouldn’t say I’m now a fan of any of the writers I hadn’t heard of before.
If you read just one story, make it: “23 Things I Hate in No Particular Order” by Gary Newhook
(Little Free Library)
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin (2025)
[Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell]
Why I read it:
- I thought it would be good to add in another title in translation.
- I’d read Schweblin before (but I wish I’d remembered that I rated Fever Dream 2*.)
Stats: 6 stories (5 x 1st-person, 1 x 3rd-person)
Themes: near-misses, grief, memory, suicidal ideation
Tone: introspective, jaded
File under: Latin American weirdness (some mild magic realism)
For fans of: Guadalupe Nettel (The Accidentals is very similar but a bit better)
Caveat(s): A couple of the stories are overlong and none of them are particularly memorable.
If you read just one story, make it: “William in the Window”
(Read via NetGalley) 
The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams, compiled by Robert Coles (1939)
Why I read it:
- I’m not sure how I came across it; perhaps through another doctor–author such as Gavin Francis or Atul Gawande?
Stats: 14 stories (plus a handful of poems and an autobiographical fragment), all 1st-person
Themes: addiction, childbirth, immigrants, poverty, the randomness of suffering
Tone: hardboiled, dedicated
File under: autofiction, dirty realism
For fans of: Raymond Carver, Gabriel Weston
Caveat(s): The descriptions of immigrants’ appearance/behaviour/speech is not always kind.
If you read just one story, make it: “Old Doc Rivers”
(University library) 
And a stand-alone story:
“The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea” by Sheila Heti (New Yorker, 2025)
To my knowledge, this is the only short fiction Heti has published. I’m generally a big fan of her bizarre autofiction – though Pure Colour was a step too far for me – and was fascinated to see on Eleanor’s blog that this is historical fiction, a genre Heti hasn’t attempted before. Or is it historical? The students of a girls’ boarding school have been sent out on a ship for their safety during a conflict. With news of a planned meet-up with a boys’ boat for a talent show and calls to knit socks for soldiers, it seems it must be the Second World War. But then there are references to headphones, Prince and Kurt Vonnegut. So it’s an alternative Cold War fantasy? Or a dystopian future scenario with retro elements? As in Motherhood, the characters appeal to an Oracle (here, a photograph of a departed girl called Audrey) when stymied by confusion. But the actual plot is just girls wanting men to love them – Dani obsesses about Sebastien, with whom she’s exchanging letters; Flora can’t stop thinking about her father’s infidelity – a common Heti theme, but the teenage perspective feels glib, indulgent; it’s YA without the heart or commitment. So I was somewhat aghast to learn this is from Heti’s novel in progress.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
