Short Stories Challenge 2018 – The House At The End Of The World by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky.

What’s The House At The End Of The World all about?:

The House At The End Of The World follows a father and daughter who are surviving in the wilderness after the end of civilisation.

What did I think?:

For those of you who have read my previous reviews of the stories in this collection you might appreciate I had mixed feelings on reading and finishing the final story in Things That Fall From The Sky. Generally, I’ve had quite varied thoughts about the stories within – sometimes, they have been excellent and I cannot fault them, sometimes I’ve just shrugged and not thought very much of the story either way and others, well….one in particular was one of the worst short stories I’ve ever read. As a result, I came to The House At The End Of The World with quite an open mind, thinking I could either love it, hate it or be completely indifferent. I did end up enjoying it BUT the story-line reminded me very much of one of my favourite novels and I couldn’t treat it as a narrative in its own right because of this unfortunately.

The story follows Holly, four years old when we first meet her and describes her life with her father as they live out in the forest in a house made completely by her father’s hands, hunt and forage for food and even grow their own vegetables in a make-shift garden near to their home. We are not told what has happened to the rest of civilisation but we get the impression that Holly and her father are two of the very few people left in the world and, as a result, must survive accordingly. This story follows their beautiful relationship, daily life and also their struggles when Holly’s father manages to break his arm and Holly is forced to learn more about their way of life and do much more for herself and her father in order to pull them both through.

I don’t really want to say too much more as there is an event that happens that could be described as being quite unexpected and perhaps an alternative direction from where the reader thought the narrative may be leading. For me, I didn’t exactly expect it but as soon as it happened I was instantly reminded of one of my favourite novels as I mentioned earlier. However, I’m very hesitant to even mention the name of that novel because just by saying it, if you have read it, gives away a considerable spoiler about parts of this story and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for anyone. “The event” was the major sticking point for me with this tale. Although I loved it in the novel, I didn’t particularly want to read about it again in a different story by a different author. That’s not the fault of the author, both of them just happened to come up with similar ideas and wrote a narrative around them. Personally, it just didn’t feel fresh enough for me because I felt like I had read it before.

Saying all this, if I put that novel to one side and had never read it, I would say this story is completely beautiful, in the language the author uses and in the execution of the plot. I loved the relationship between Holly and her father and the descriptions of the environment around them were simply stunning – you could almost believe they were the only two people on the Earth and I found myself as a reader really rooting for them.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

NEXT SHORT STORY: Which Reminded Her, Later by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

Short Stories Challenge 2018 – Part One

Image from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aniapps.shortstories

Hello everyone and welcome to the first part of my Short Stories Challenge for 2018. In part five of my challenge in 2017, like many of the other parts, I had some absolutely fantastic finds like Seeing Double by Sara Maitland, Unplugged by Dianne Gray and The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands by Stephen King. However, I also had some that I wasn’t particularly fussed about, like The Man From Mars by Margaret Atwood and Freaks by Tess Gerritsen, both of which were huge disappointments. Here’s what I’ve got lined up for the first few months of 2018:

The House At The End Of The World by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky.

Which Reminded Her, Later by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

Books And Roses by Helen Oyeyemi from the collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.

The Apple Tree by Daphne du Maurier from the collection The Birds And Other Stories.

The Balloon Hoax by Edgar Allan Poe from the collection The Best Short Stories Of Edgar Allan Poe.

Dibblespin by Angela Slatter from the collection Sourdough And Other Stories.

Remmy Rothstein Toes The Line by Karin Slaughter (stand-alone).

Why The Yew Tree Lives So Long by Kate Mosse from the collection The Mistletoe Bride And Other Haunting Tales.

A Child’s Problem by Reggie Oliver from the collection A Book Of Horrors.

At The Mountain Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft from the collection The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft.

 

Short Stories Challenge 2017 – The Light Through The Window by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky.

What’s The Light Through The Window all about?:

The Light Through The Window is about a lonely window cleaner who watches people behind the windows of a high rise building and mourns the loss of his own family.

What did I think?:

I think it’s fair to say that some of the stories in this collection have been really hit and miss for me. Some of them are absolutely beautiful – namely The Ceiling, but others such as The Passenger and The Jesus Stories I’ve found myself getting quite frustrated with. I’m afraid The Light Through The Window was another one of those stories where I don’t really have any strong emotions for or against it and I finished it feeling rather apathetic about the whole reading experience and to be honest, quite worried about writing a review as I have a feeling I’m going to be struggling for things to say.

Our unnamed protagonist for the story is a male window cleaner who diligently cleans the windows of a high rise building every day without fail. He has never married or had children and from time to time, fantasises about the people behind the windows that he cleans in that he is part of their family. He doesn’t have any family of his own still alive but reminisces constantly about his mother, father and grandfather who were a big part of his life. Actually, he often imagines that he sees them all when he is working and looks forward to this experience and the intense connection that he still feels he has with them even though they have all passed away. He attempts to start a relationship with a woman behind one of the windows but unfortunately his efforts are not really fruitful and he remains alone but with the knowledge that he can always see his family any time he wants with the power of his own mind.

So, yes….gosh – what can I say? Of course, as with all Kevin Brockmeier’s stories, the writing is truly stunning and the imagery and vocabulary he uses to tell his tale is masterful. I always enjoy reading his prose, even if I don’t care very much for the story, he is a true artist with words and it’s always lovely to experience. He did succeed in making me feel terribly sad for his window cleaner, especially when he tried (and failed miserably) to form a connection with one of the women in the building but that was the only part of the story which I felt any real emotion or enjoyment. I felt that nothing really happened which sometimes isn’t a bad thing if the story focuses purely on character development. However, I don’t feel that this was really explored in the way it could have been either. Gorgeous words, fairly interesting premise but I’m afraid this was just a bit of a letdown for me.

Would I recommend it?:

Not sure.

Star rating (out of 5):

NEXT SHORT STORY: Vessel by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

Short Stories Challenge 2017 – Part Three

Image from https://www.standoutbooks.com/how-publish-short-story/

Hello everyone and welcome to Part Three of my Short Stories Challenge this year. Part Two was again, very interesting with some really memorable stories read, namely The Birds by Daphne du Maurier and Gallowberries by Angela Slatter which were both fantastic and HIGHLY recommended. Here’s to finding some more great short stories and authors in Part Three!

An Anxious Man by James Lasdun from the collection Stories To Get You Through The Night.

Word Processor Of The Gods by Stephen King from the collection Skeleton Crew.

Hot Dog Stand by Dianne Gray from the collection Manslaughter And Other Tears.

Blue Moon by Lucy Wood from the collection Diving Belles.

Master by Angela Carter from the collection The Story: Love, Loss & The Lives of Women.

Possum by Matthew Holness from the collection The New Uncanny: Tales Of Unease edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page.

The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor by Arthur Conan Doyle from the collection The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes.

The Heart Goes Last: Positron, Episode Four by Margaret Atwood (stand-alone).

The White Doe by Rosy Thornton from the collection Sandlands.

The Light Through The Window by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky.

Short Stories Challenge 2017 – The Passenger by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky

What’s The Passenger all about?:

The Passenger follows a man who has spent his whole life on an airplane in a strange, dystopian world where a whole civilisation are born, fall in love, reproduce and die all on the plane.

What did I think?:

You know how short story collections are sometimes a bit hit and miss? There’s those stories that you absolutely love and you could wax on for ages about how talented the author is? Then there’s those stories that make you hang your head, shake it a little and wonder if somehow you might be missing something? Well, The Passenger falls somewhere in between for me. I would never compare it to The Jesus Stories, (which I might have disliked a little bit!) but at the same time, there’s better stories in this collection, for example The Ceiling, which was a magnificent piece of writing.

So where do I start? Okay, there are lots of positive things about this story, especially the premise. We are inside the mind of one male passenger on an airplane and he is talking about his mother’s death and how her body was dealt with after she died (by dropping it out of the plane of course!). I was completely confused and it wasn’t until a couple of pages in that I realised that this story was about a strange new world where all the passengers of this particular plane live out their whole lives on that plane. They don’t land, pick up new passengers etc so any new life has to be initiated by passengers currently on the plane getting it on.

Absolutely fascinating premise and there was so much potential for this story to do amazing things….however….it just ended up as a bit of a damp squib for me. Our male protagonist mentions an encounter with the woman in the seat in front of him that leads to a sexual experience and his belief that she is currently carrying his child, even if she has not spoke to him or even deigned to make eye contact since the experience occurred. What irked me about the story was that it didn’t seem to go anywhere. There were bucket-loads of questions that I wanted answered and I left it feeling so unsatisfied and disappointed. For example, how did they end up in this situation? Was there an incident on land that led to flying in a plane being the safest option? Is this incident still going on and they are doomed to fly for all eternity? How on earth do they manage to fly around without refuelling? And what about food/water supplies?

Questions like these may not matter to some people and they might be able to enjoy the wonder and mystery of it all but I really needed a reason to keep reading. I was interested for sure but then cursed myself for being so interested as I never got the answers to what I needed to know! The beauty of Kevin Brockmeier’s writing is undeniable and it was a brilliant idea for a story BUT… am I missing something? I’d love to know if you’ve read this short story and got something out of it that I didn’t. I was slightly tempted to read it again to see if I’d missed a trick somewhere but to be honest, I didn’t want to get cross with it all again! I must urge that the author is a fantastic writer – maybe this story was just too much for me.

Would I recommend it?:

Not sure.

Star rating (out of 5):

NEXT SHORT STORY CHALLENGE: Fleeing Complexity by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

Short Stories Challenge 2017 – Part One

Its a new year and time for some more short stories. I usually do short stories in three month blocks however I’ve been struggling to keep up with this so instead of calling this post January to March I shall call it Part One and see how I get on! This is what I’ll be reading in the first half of 2017:

The Raft by Stephen King from the collection Skeleton Crew

The Butcher Of Meena Creek by Dianne Gray from the collection Manslaughter And Other Tears

The Wishing Tree by Lucy Wood from the collection Diving Belles

Faithful Lovers by Margaret Drabble from the collection The Story: Love Loss & The Lives Of Women

Double Room by Ramsey Campbell from the collection The New Uncanny: Tales Of Unease edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page

The Adventure Of The Engineer’s Thumb by Arthur Conan Doyle from the collection The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

Erase Me: Positron, Episode Three – Margaret Atwood (stand-alone)

On The Banks Of Table River: (Planet Lucina, Andromeda Galaxy, AD 2319) by Rajesh Parameswaran from the collection I Am An Executioner: Love Stories

The Passenger by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky

Fleeing Complexity by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

Short Stories Challenge – Space by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky

What’s Space all about?:

Space is told from the perspective of a widower who is not only struggling with his own grief but trying to deal with his son’s grief also.

What did I think?:

Well, this story was quite a welcome surprise after the horrors of the previous story in this collection – The Jesus Stories which I gave I believe, my lowest rating ever. Shocking! Space was a really sad little tale that left me feeling quite choked up and a little despondent, told from a male character’s point of view as he comes to terms with losing his wife. He narrates the story as if he is talking to his wife, Della, which you get the feeling he does quite a lot and gets some comfort from.

The couple have a son, Eric, of indeterminate age (but old enough to have stubble, as the author tells us) and this is where our narrator is struggling the most. Ever since the funeral, he hasn’t been able to communicate with Eric about his mother in the way he would like and often ends up angering him instead. It is not until one night, when they have a power cut and there is nothing left to do but talk, that father and son have an initially wary heart-to-heart that leads to tenuous bridges beginning to be built. Eric confides in his father that he likes to watch television as a bit of a distraction from what he is feeling inside and that it takes very little effort, whilst his father confides in him some things about his mother that he had previously not known.

Kevin Brockmeier’s beautiful way with prose sets an evocative scene of a house without electricity, where the two inhabitants are forced together to share their feelings and become closer as a result. It was painfully sad to read and quite heart-breaking at points, especially when our narrator becomes desperately worried that he will eventually forget things about his wife as time goes on. It’s definitely a return to form after the disaster that I found The Jesus Stories and I’m now eager to read the next story in the collection.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

NEXT SHORT STORY: If It Keeps On Raining by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

 

 

Short Stories Challenge 2016 – April to June

Welcome to another three months in my Short Stories Challenge! The first few months of this year have whizzed by and I’ve found some great pieces of short fiction to add to my collection. Here’s the stories that will take me right through to the summer:

Week beginning 4th April

Elephants In Captivity (Part One) by Rajesh Parameswaran from the collection I Am An Executioner: Love Stories

Week beginning 11th April

Space by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky

Week beginning 18th April

If It Keeps On Raining by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

Week beginning 25th April

The Lordly Ones by Daphne du Maurier from the collection The Breaking Point

Week beginning 2nd May

Tiger Moth by Graham Joyce from the collection Tales For A Dark Evening

Week beginning 9th May

The Shadow Tree by Angela Slatter from the collection Sourdough And Other Stories

Week beginning 16th May

The Unremarkable Heart by Karin Slaughter (stand-alone)

Week beginning 23rd May

Red Letter Day by Kate Mosse from the collection The Mistletoe Bride And Other Haunting Tales

Week beginning 30th May

Getting It Wrong by Ramsey Campbell from the collection A Book Of Horrors

Week beginning 6th June

The Haunter Of The Dark by H.P. Lovecraft from the collection The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft

Week beginning 13th June

Hogmanay Homicide by Edward Marston from the collection The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 7

Week beginning 20th June

What We Save by Julie Orringer from the collection How To Breathe Underwater

Week beginning 27th June

A Convalescent Ego by Richard Yates from the collection Stories To Get You Through The Night

Short Stories Challenge 2015 – October to December

Image from http://www.slideshare.net/ernella32/teaching-the-short-story

It’s nearly the end of the year and here’s what I’ll be reading short story wise to see out 2015!

Week beginning 5th October

Corrugated Dreaming by Dianne Gray from the collection Manslaughter And Other Tears

Week beginning 12th October

Beachcombing by Lucy Wood from the collection Diving Belles

Week beginning 19th October

A Man And Two Women by Doris Lessing from the collection The Story: Love, Loss And The Lives of Women edited by Victoria Hislop

Week beginning 26th October

The New Veterans by Karen Russell from the collection Vampires In The Lemon Grove

Week beginning 2nd November

The Adventure Of the Blue Carbuncle by Arthur Conan Doyle from the collection The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

Week beginning 9th November

Vuotjärvi by Sarah Hall from the collection The Beautiful Indifference

Week beginning 16th November

Bibhutibhushan Malik’s Final Storyboard by Rajesh Parameswaran from the collection I Am An Executioner: Love Stories

Week beginning 23rd November

The Jesus Stories by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky

Week beginning 30th November

We Were Just Driving Around by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

Week beginning 7th December

The Chamois by Daphne du Maurier from the collection The Breaking Point

Week beginning 14th December

Under The Pylon by Graham Joyce from the collection Tales For A Dark Evening

Week beginning 21st December

A Mighty Horde Of Women In Very Big Hats, Advancing by Michel Faber from the collection The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories

Week beginning 28th December

The Mean Time by Karin Slaughter (stand-alone)

Short Stories Challenge – Small Degrees by Kevin Brockmeier from the collection Things That Fall From The Sky

What’s Small Degrees all about?:

Small Degrees is about a man who works hard to develop his own typing face but risks losing his wife as a result.

What did I think?:

Kevin Brockmeier is such a beautiful writer, even if I’m not keen on the story he is trying to tell I always appreciate the dream-like quality of his writing with absolutely stunning sentences. Small Degrees starts almost like a fairy tale where we see a young child growing up staring at books in his parents library. His parents are desperate that he shouldn’t become a “fool” when they see him looking at blank pages, so decide that finding a trade is the best thing for him. He becomes apprentice at a typing foundry, a job which turns out to suit him very well as he loves staring at the letters that are being produced, much like when he was a child.

The story progresses quite smoothly, much like our characters life. He marries, has a few children, raises them to adulthood until they leave the family home. Throughout all this he works tirelessly at the foundry until he retires and stays at home. It seems that he cannot let this part of his life go as he suddenly decides that he should make a typeface of his own. Again from morning until night he works until his hands are black and stained from the ink to make the perfect letters for his new alphabet:

“He wanted to design a typeface that would recall his hours of childhood watching m’s and n’s and commas that read as fluidly as the swaying of long grass in the wind; b’s and d’s, p’s and q’s, like lampposts reflected in a pool of water. He was willing to work gradually, assembling and re-examining each stroke of each character, the hairline of a V or the wedded bowls of a lowercase g, over a period of several days.”

I love that paragraph, it’s a perfect example of Brockmeier’s lyrical prose, especially how he describes the letters i.e. g with the wedded bowls, it’s truly beautiful and I could read it over and over again. Meanwhile, while our narrator has been working his fingers to the bone, his poor wife is feeling rather neglected. She had always kept his house clean, looked after the children, cooked his dinner etc and had already been feeling pangs of loneliness since the children left when all the housework had been done and she had nothing to do but wait for her husband. She was hoping that when he retired they would spend some more time together and now he is spending all his time developing a new type face she feels pushed to the side and tells him so in no uncertain terms. In the end, exasperated by his lack of communication she leaves him. How our narrator deals with this and realises what he has lost is written with such subtlty by the author that it almost broke my heart. The house becomes dirty, our narrator does not look after himself properly but since his heart is only given away in “small degrees,” his loneliness and love for his wife comes out in his work. It might take a bit of magic to bring them both together again.

This is such a gorgeous story, I can’t rave on enough about the beautiful language – you get it, right? After I finished this story I immediately had to read it again just to read it a bit slower and appreciate every single word as it should be read. I liked it even more on the second reading as with other stories in this collection and believe the author has a real talent for poetic phrasing and word arranging, if that makes any sense? I can’t wait to read the next story in this collection.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

NEXT SHORT STORY: Airshow by Jon McGregor from the collection This Isn’t The Sort of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You