February2010
This Month: The largest number of short stories we have ever reviewed in one month: 145 in McSweeney's Small Box, and 38 in Oxfam's four-book Ox-Tales set.. as well as greenflies, strays and easter rabbits, stories in C Minor, the real louise, friends and fajitas, childhoods sold and prize-winning Irish stories.

Also, for the first time, two authors declined to answer that thorniest of interview questions: 'What does story mean to you?' What does it mean to you? Come and join in the conversation on our new discussion forum

Congratulations! to Short Review authors Wendy Marcus, whose collection, Polyglot: Stories from the West's Wet Edge was shortlisted for the 2009 Jewish Book Council's Fiction category, and Deborah Biancotti, whose collection, A Book of Endings, was shortlisted for the 2010 William L. Crawford award.
 Competitions: 2  books to give away this month: Greenfly by Tom Lee and Easter Rabbit by Joseph young. Find out how to win>>

And on the Blog: Along with this month's review of Ox-Tales, some more fund-raising short story anthologies that go that much further: " When I started compiling this blog post, I thought there might be a few - but then the list kept growing. At The Short Review, we encourage everyone to read short story collections, however you might get hold of them, but in this case, we feel justified in saying: Go buy these books!" Read the rest of the blog post here >>

For Writers: We've updated the deadlines  for short story collection contests so now's the time to submit.>>
                           
 Reviews
"We eat. The only sound in the room is that of three people eating and swallowing – and digesting the absence of a fourth......"
Stories in the Key of C Minor by Russell Bittner
"Next time, I’ll make sure my seat belt is more tightly fastened."

Read the full review by Jason Makansi

"Everything was different and yet, aside from my weekly betrayal, nothing was. June and I saw friends.. attended hospital appointments and ante- natal classes.... June's belly continued to swell. But I could no longer see June and I clearly..."
Greenfly
by Tom Lee
"A wry, mesmerizing and distinctive tribute to the trampled human spirit. ..." read the full review by Carol Reid

"While Arlo’s parents argued, he levitated. Seven months old, ready to put the world in his mouth, and eager to jingle everything, he focused in on Dad’s voice, then Mom’s while floating his head a few inches above the mattress.."
Feeding Strays by Stefanie Freele
"Incandescent is to best describe this debut collection. The stories have an ineffable quality: they get down to bedrock of truth." Read the full review by Michelle Reale



"Like suicide-butterflies they swarmed from the jungle to die under mini-vans that throbbed drum and bass music; ... wavering in gentle reggaes that wafted down the mountains like fog ....."
Ox Tales: Air, Fire, Earth Water
by Various Authors
"A veritable who’s who anthology of good writing by great writers, supporting a worthy cause, bound loosely in themes of earth, air, water and fire..."
Read the full review by james Murray-White


"The filmmaker forgets his camera. He goes to the river instead, ice sliding by in blue sheets. On one is a man cooking over a pale fire. Hey, says the man, sliding by. By the time this melts, I'll be in warmer parts....."
Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young
"..A fascinating collection of 86 micro fictions that invite a subsequent reading, not so much for analysis, but for the sheer immersion into word and white space..." Read the full review by David Woodruff


"Uncle Philo was a fanatic Puritan always suspicious of immoral behaviour. He wouldn’t even allow the salt and pepper shakers to stand next to each other on the kitchen table..."
Friends & Fajitas by Betty Serra-Rojas
"Despite being underambitious in its scope and overstated in its sentiment, Fajitas and Friends is a refreshingly warm-hearted collection of short stories."
Read the full review by Chelsey Flood


"A bit of the angry dust cloud comes sulking into the bar like a lonely old man looking for a drink. It settles and lies at my feet and on my shoes. I take a drag on my cigarette and the smoke sweetly passes through the port wine that hangs like a mist at the back of my throat...."
Selling Their Childhood by James Buchanan
"..Richly textured glimpses into the private lives of people struggling with the business of living, some on the brink of upheaval, others reconciled to their fate ..." Read the full review by Sarah Hilary


"So what makes me think I’m going to find Michael, with his superhero looks, leaning over a balcony ready to fly, no tricks, no strings, no coke, no heroin. I carry chalk with me to write in the pissy stairwells: I’M LOOKING FOR YOU MICHAEL. That way I can tell where I’ve already been......"
The Real Louise and Other Stories by Ailsa Cox
"... like walking through an inner city, peering into windows, listening to conversations and watching fragmentary relationships strengthen, falter or fall apart right in front of you..." Read the full review by Annie Clarkson


"Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won't have to feel this......"
Davy Byrnes Stories 6 Prize- Winning Stories from the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing award 
"Reading "winners" can colour the reading process. But these stories are justly rewarded, especially Claire Keegan's." Read the full review by Tania Hershman


"I’m alarmed, knowing I’ll have to remember the scene perfectly, as it is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen......"
One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box by Deb Olen Unferth, Sarah Manguso, Dave Eggers
"An uneven boxed set of three collections of very short stories from McSweeney’s. Only Sarah Manguso’s stories consistently shine..."

Read the full review by Scott Doyle
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The Short Review shines the spotlight on short story collections, new and older, across all genres, styles, publishers and countries. Each month we review 10 books and interview as many of their authors as possible....
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Interviews

Ailsa Cox
The Real Louise

"I'd started to think quite hard about how stories are ordered in collections after being involved in judging the Edge Hill Prize. The first story is important, obviously, and so is the last one; but there's also the tricky question of balancing longer and shorter stories, heavy and light, experimental or traditional. "
Read the interview>>


james Buchanan
Selling Their Childhoods

"One of my biggest complaints with many short stories is that they fail to tell an interesting story. So my first command to myself is to always be interesting. This, does not mean every story has to have a formal structure of conflict and resolution. ..it also could provide a sketch or insight as to the thoughts, actions, or life of some character in crisis or some form of conflict.... I have read a number of beautifully written stories that left me flat because they failed to arouse my interest..."
Read the interview>>


Betty Serra-Rojas
Fajitas and Friends

 "I chose stories inspired by children and the elderly. I've done plenty of volunteer work and have met some amazing people, particularly people who hardly have anything and don't walk around with a sense of entitlement. However, all the stories in the collection were fictional."
Read the interview>>


Joseph Young
Easter Rabbit

"The oldest story in the collection is probably about 3 to 3.5 years old, and the newest ones I wrote just before we put it together. There are 86 stories in the collection. So, if they each took between 5 minutes and 24 complete hours (1440 minutes) to write, it took 61,705 minutes (1028.5 hours) to finish the collection. This certainly is nowhere near accurate...."
Read the interview>>


Stefanie Freele
Feeding Strays

"I'm greatly honored when anyone buys a book, but I'm also fearful they won't like it - but on the other hand if they don't, I do know that people have varied tastes.... there are over fifty stories in the book, so I don't expect people to love them all. ... "
Read the interview>>


Tom Lee
Greenfly

"Well, I am a very very slow writer so there aren’t many stories that didn’t go in the collection. That obviously makes the selection process fairly easy. Deciding the order was more difficult although I’m not certain in the end how much difference it makes. It came down to some quite prosaic stuff like making sure all "the cocaine stories" , as I like to think of them, didn’t come one after the other and bore or turn people off..."
Read the interview>>


Russell Bittner
Stories in the Key of C Minor

"I’ve spent my entire professional career in sales. To be quite frank, I’m a piss-poor salesman, one of the worst I’ve ever come across. I present what I’ve got to sell in as few words as possible and let the buyer decide whether he or she is interested. If not, no problem. I move on with no regrets and hope I haven’t dropped a neutron bomb in the process"
Read the interview>>