Title: The Doll: Short Stories Writer: Daphne du Maurier Publishing House: Virago Modern Classics Date of Publication: 2011 Rating: 5 stars ”There was only the island. Beyond it lay the ghostly, the intangible; the truth was in the seared rock, in the touch of the soil, in the sound of the waves breaking against the…
Tag: short stories
The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland
Title: The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland Writer: Various edited by Reggie Chamberlain- King Publishing House: Blackstaff Press Date of Publication: October 4th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ”A dream possesses all of Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland is a sort of fairyland too. It is a place of outspoken symbols and unspoken rules,…
First Person Singular
Title: First Person Singular Writer: Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel) Publishing House: Harvill Secker Date of Publication: April 6th 2021 (first published July 2020) Rating: 2 stars ‘’But the whole neighbourhood was still and silent, as if the dense clouds above had swallowed up all sound.’’ Cream: A young man is invited to a…
Escape Routes
Title: Escape Routes Writer: Naomi Ishiguro Publishing House: Tinder Press Date of Publication: February 6th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘’I can climb out on to the roof from the windows and see the whole metropolis stretched out before me, those hundreds of buildings – white, or grey, or black, depending on how filthy they are…
How to Make Paper When the World is Ending
Title: How to Make Paper When the World Is Ending Writer: Dallas Woodburn Publishing House: Koehler Books Date of Publication: June 28th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’But sometimes stories are all we have.’’ Story to Tell Around a Campfire: The narrator instructs us how to tell the tale of Hannah and Mark, a couple who…
How to Gut a Fish
Title: How to Gut a Fish Writer: Sheila Armstrong Publishing House: Bloomsbury Date of Publication: February 17th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’The weakness in the soil first appears at dusk in the centre of a ring of stones in a field. A small copse of trees weave around banks of raised earth, and the exposed…
Serpents in Eden : Countryside Crimes
Title: Serpents in Eden Writer: Various, edited by Martin Edwards Publishing House: British Library Crime Classics Date of Publication: March 1st 2016 Rating: 5 stars ‘’It was a day of cloud, and the very air over the moors was grey, and the long waves of heather were dark as the black earth, the distant woodland…
Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain
Title: Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain Writer: Various edited by John Miller Publishing House: British Library Publishing Date of Publication: August 27th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘’These are the aspects of our experience of nature that cannot be offset; the history of a place cannot be traded off against the history…
The First Person and Other Stories
Title: The First Person and Other Stories Writer: Ali Smith Publishing House: Hamish Hamilton Ltd Date of Publication: January 2nd 2008 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Williams Carlos Williams says that the short story, which acts like the flare of a match struck in the dark, is the only real form for describing the briefness, the brokenness…
Out There:Stories
Title: Out There: Stories Writer: Kate Folk Publishing House: Random House Date of Publication: March 29th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’By night our bones dissolve into our blood like sugar in tea. We sleep in anti-gravity pods with slick outer shells and vinyl interiors, our limbs held by Velcro straps, our torsos bound by cuirasses…
Panics
Title: Panics (original title: Viens Writer: Barbara Molinard (translated by Emma Ramadan) Publishing House: The Feminist Press Date of Publication: August 9th 2022 (first published 1969) Rating: 5 stars ‘’EVERYTHING BARBARA MOLLINARD HAS WRITTEN HAS BEEN TORN TO SHREDS. The texts that follow were also torn to shreds. They were put back together, torn up…
Ιnto the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City
Title: Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City Writer: Various, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley Publishing House: British Library Publishing Date of Publication: August 20th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Like London fog itself, the power of the weird tale lies in its potential to suddenly shift from benign to baleful as the light…
Dead Relatives
Τitle: Dead Relatives Writer: Lucie McKnight Hardy Publishing House: Dead Ink Date of Publication: October 21st 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’The garden lies quiet, as if it’s sleeping. Nothing grows this late in November, and everything is sad and grey. The only thing of beauty is the lake that lies at the bottom of the…
How We Disappear: Novella & Stories
Title: How We Disappear:Novella & Stories Writer: Tara Lynn Masih Publishing House: Press 53 Date of Publication: September 13th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Yesterday I found myself in St. Servaasbasiliek, and lit two candles. Organ music wended its way into my history, drawing forth doubts. It is music – caught, held, and shot back down…
A Postcard for Annie
Title: A Postcard for Annie (original title: Postcort til Annie) Writer: Ida Jessen (translated by Martin Aitken) Publishing House: Archipelago Books Date of Publication: May 10th 2022 (first published January 1st 2013) Rating: 5 stars ‘’In her coat, standing at the counter, Tove wrote: ‘’I’ve gone out.’’ She then crumpled the note in her hand…
Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold
Title: Love in Colour Writer: Bolu Babalola Publishing House: Headline Date of Publication: August 20th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘You are a queen. You are Lorde, Angelou, Simone, Walker, Hooks, Davis, Morrison, Knowles, Fenty, Robinson-Obama. You will shake the world, you will move the earth, you will be audacious with your essence, you will take…
Life Ceremony
Title: Life Ceremony Writer: Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) Publishing House:Grove Press Date of Publication: July 5th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’A hundred years later, what would our bodies be used for? Would we be chair legs or sweaters or clock hands? Would we be used for a longer time after our deaths…
Minor Hauntings (Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth)
Title: Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth Writer: Various edited by Jen Baker Publishing House: British Library Publishing Date of Publication: April 29th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Many years ago there stood at the corner of the street leading out of Upper Kennington – lane a great red-brick mansion, which one very wet evening,…
The Trouble With Happiness
Title: The Trouble With Happiness and Other Stories Writer: Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Michael Favala Goldman) Publishing House: Penguin Classics Date of Publication: March 3rd 2022 Rating: 5 stars “There is nothing so merciful as love.” The Umbrella: An umbrella becomes the metaphor for a young woman’s unsatisfactory life in the hands of a cruel,…
Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean
Title: Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Carribean Writer: Various edited by Peekash Press Publishing House: Peekash Press Date of Publication: March 17th 2014 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Here in the rocky haunts of the islanders themselves are landscapes where ‘’the rocks are sharper than a coconut vendor’s cutlass, and the waters lash with a vengeance,’’…
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