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Short Stories


DuncanEwart

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I'm reading a collection of Alice Munro short stories at the moment. To my shame, this is the first work of hers I have ever read but it won't be the last. She is widely acknowledged as a master short story writer and I can see why. Reading her work has made me think about the other short story writers whose work I've read over the years- writers such as Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield, all of whom excel in this art form. If I was to pick out only one story as my favourite it would have to be "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, a work I first read as an undergraduate over thirty years ago and that has stuck in my mind ever since and that always has the same affect upon me regardless of how many times I have read it- it reduces me to tears. It has my two favourite child characters in literature, "the two little Kelveys", and although these kids only appear towards the end of the story it is their introduction that breaks my heart. 

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I recently enjoyed Frank Bill's collection "Crimes in Southern Indiana", especially "A coon hunter's noir" which is probably up there with the very best short stories I have ever read.

Pinckney Benedict's "Town Smokes" does not have a bad story in it. I have read his novel "Dogs of God" and although I liked it, I thought a lot of it read like a collection of short stories- many of the chapters could pass as stand alone pieces. You can tell he is better at the shorter form. A master of it, really.

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O. Henry wrote many short stories , practically inventing the "twist in the tail" which many people think is indispensable in a good short story. His "Gift of the Magi" never fails to raise a chuckle in me for its blatant sentimentality, just as Oscar Wilde could never refrain from laughing at the death of Little Nell. Annie Proulx also does some superb short stories as did Neil Munro. The Para Handy stories still stand up quite well and Lewis Grassic Gibbon also has some fine tales. The one in which a mother casually reveals to her children that she had never married their father, thereby exploding their middle-class pretensions is a beezer. It's the title story from a collection called Smeddum. Find it here: 

 

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