A Brief Moment of Weightlessness: Review and Giveaway

"I pressed my nose to the car window.  As we neared the coast, the light became sharper, the pines scrubbier. Everything became more of what it was.  I would write that down later, maybe in a poem."
~ A Brief Moment of Weightlessness, Victoria Fish


A Brief Moment of Weightlessness: Storiesby Victoria Fish is comprised of eleven short stories, that were published as a collection by Mayapple Press in 2014.  When I was invited to participate in the TLC book tour for A Brief Moment of Weightlessness, I was a bit concerned, because as much as I enjoy reading short stories, I tend to struggle with how to review them.  How do you properly review or discuss or present a collection of short stories?  Do you say a couple of words or sentences about the premise of each story, or about the various characters, or do you offer instead a longer summary of your favorites?  Or, do you simply write, without preconceived ideas, and let the process of writing shape the post?  Although I wasn't quite sure how to write this post about these short stories, I decided to start with a succinct synopsis of each story.

~ Where Do You Find a Turtle with No Legs? is written in the third person from the point of view of a fourth-grader, Maddie, who has just found a flattened turtle on the road, and is thinking about her father, who's in jail.

~ A Brief Moment of Weightlessness is written in the first person from the perspective of Frances; this story centers around her family's week long summer trip to a cabin on a lake in Maine.

~ The Sari is written in the third person from point of view of Sarah, a college student taking a semester abroad in India, who has a dream about her deceased mother.

~ Green Line is written in the third person from the point of view of Adam, who goes to see Esme and his daughter, Lily. 

~ Unleashed is written in the third person from the point of view of Alison from the Pet Visiting Program, who brings a dog and her four-year-old son, Thomas, to the nursing home.

~ What is the Color Blue? is written in the third person from the point of view of Claire, who becomes friends with her striking new neighbor, Isabel, who has just moved to Vermont.

~ Sanctuary Therapy is written in the first person from the perspective of Emily, whose son, Jackson, is being treated for cancer.

~ The Last and Kindest Thing is written in the third person from the point of view of Adam, whose dog, Banjo, is nearing the end of his life.  (Adam is also in the story Green Line.)

~ Phantom Pain is written in the third person, from the point of view of Katherine, whose husband, Eddie, has lost part of his leg.

~ The Voice at the End of the Line is written in the third person from the point of view of Valerie; her daughter, Delia, calls her in the middle of the night while Valerie's on a  business trip.

~ Between the Dream and Here is written in the third person from the point of view of Martha Waterman, an elderly woman who has just seen her childhood friend, Kate, in a dream.


These very brief descriptions give you an idea about the content of the stories, which are about family and friends and feelings.  The collection begins with a story from the point of view of a young girl, and ends with the perspective of an elderly woman.  In between are stories with main characters of varying ages, in different stages of life.  It's through these varied and distinct voices and perspectives that we see the world, and are transported by fiction into the lives of others.

Although I'm still not certain of the best way to review a collection of short stories, I'm certain that I need to express my admiration for Victoria Fish's writing.  It's truly astonishing.  What makes these stories so extraordinary?  The dialogue in these stories seems natural and authentic.  I also think it's the amount of description and detail that the author uses throughout her stories--not too little, not too much--but exactly the right amount which brings these stories to life, and makes them real, believable, and touching.  The situations and emotions in these stories are familiar, and as I immersed myself in them, I experienced the feelings of the main characters.  I felt empathy and cared about the characters.  Victoria Fish skillfully captures fleeting moments, and infuses her stories with a rare emotional depth.  I enjoyed this collection very much, and would eagerly read more short stories, or other work, by this gifted author.

I am very pleased to be able to share this exquisite collection of short stories with a reader.  Mayapple Press is generously offering a copy of A Brief Moment of Weightlessness as a giveaway (U.S./Canada only).

• To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment.
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower.
• For an additional chance, post about this contest on your blog, Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.
• For one more chance, mention which story summarized above most interests you at this moment.

Enter by 5 PM PDT on Monday, October 6.  One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Tuesday, October 7.  Good luck! 

Special thanks to Lisa from TLC for sending me a copy of this book.  For more reviews, giveaways, and other features pertaining to this book, please visit the other stops on TLC's tour for A Brief Moment of Weightlessness.

The Frangipani Hotel: Review and Giveaway

Ghosts!  The Frangipani Hotel: Stories by Violet Kupersmith is a collection of short fiction based on traditional Vietnamese tales, which features the presence of the supernatural in the form of ghosts.  I'm not terribly familiar with ghost stories as a genre, so I consulted Wikipedia, as usual, for more insight.

"A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them."

Simple enough to understand, this is an appropriate description for the short stories in the book The Frangipani Hotel, which will be available to the public on April 1, 2014.  The nine short stories in this collection take place in the United States as well as Vietnam, and deftly envelop subjects and themes which bring Vietnamese culture to life vividly, including family relationships, story-telling (within the stories), the post-Vietnam War experience, food, and also, as mentioned before, ghosts.

You may or may not believe in ghosts, but I imagine you do want to learn more about the ghosts in The Fragipani Hotel.  Most notably, these are not your average, garden-variety ghosts, who make a career of haunting and scaring people.  The  ghosts in these stories are beguiling, and appear to be regular folks--at least initially.  Somewhat unexpectedly, I loved to read about these ghosts.  Slowly and skillfully, the author makes them appear more strange, until you realize you're dealing with supernatural beings.  In the second story, Reception, which takes place in the Old Quarter of Hanoi at the dilapidated Frangipani Hotel ("the Frangi"), the main character, Phi, meets an attractive, extremely thirsty girl in room 205 with "dark, dark", "liquid eyes", who's been taking a very long bath.  He senses that the girl and the situation are rather odd, although he does not understand what's going on.  In the third story, Skin and Bones, Mrs. Tran sends her teenage daughters, Thuy and Kieu, from their home in Houston, TX, to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to visit Grandma Tran, because Mrs. Tran wants Thuy to lose some weight.  Instead, Thuy meets a vendor there, who wears a straw hat and a kerchief that covers her face, who makes her delicious Vietnamese sandwiches, bánh mì, which cause Thuy's stomach to "gurgle in anticipation".  (Usually I order my beloved phở at Vietnamese restaurants, but next time I may order bánh mì.)  In the seventh story, Turning Back (which is probably my favorite story in this collection), the main character, Phuong Nguyen, meets a naked septuagenarian outside in the early morning while at her job at Kwon's World Grocery in Houston, Vo Van Hiep, who explains his nakedness with a very unusual secret.

Violet Kupersmith

This entire collection of short fiction is bewitching and well written.  The first story, Boat Story, and the last story, Descending Dragon, are connected, and all of the stories are imaginative.  It was hard to stop reading The Frangipani Hotel once I settled down with the book, and it kept me up later than I'd planned on a few nights.  I enjoyed the way that the ghosts are introduced in the stories, and how it gradually becomes clear that they are otherworldly beings. The Frangipani Hotel is an exceptional and exquisite debut by Violet Kupersmith, and I look forward to reading future work by this author. 



Win a copy of this captivating book and be among the first to read it!  The publisher, Spiegel & Grau, is generously offering a giveaway for a copy of The Frangipani Hotel (U.S. only).

• To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment. 
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower.
• For an additional chance, post about this contest on your blog, Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 
• For one extra chance, mention ghost stories you've enjoyed reading. 

Enter by 5 PM PDT on Monday, April 7. One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Tuesday, April 8.

Special thanks to Lisa from TLC for sending me an advance reader's edition of this book.  For more reviews and features, please visit the other stops on TLC's book tour for The Frangipani Hotel.

Dubliners Double Duty (for Irish Short Story Month, and Wondrous Words Wednesday)

Who's afraid of James Joyce?  I am, or was.  I can say that now, although I'm not promising to read his novels.  I opened Dubliners with some degree of trepidation.  Was it the fact that this book, edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz, from my college days, has sections devoted to scholarly criticism and notes?  James Joyce.  The author's name alone is intimidating.  More pointedly, James Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake, a novel of comic prose noted for its avant-garde, experimental style, which has been called one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language (according to Wikipedia).

James Joyce, courtesy of Wikipedia

Irish novelist and poet James Joyce (1882-1941) is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the early 20th century.  He's well known for his novel Ulysses (1922), a lengthy book that establishes a series of parallels between its characters and events and those in Homer's Odyssey.  In addition to three books of poetry, a play, and published letters, other works by James Joyce are his short story collection, Dubliners (1914), and his novels, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).  I decided to revisit Dubliners, an older book I've had on my shelves since my college days, for Mel's third annual Irish Short Story Month, a special event on The Reading Life.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I did not retain any of my school notes on the stories in Dubliners, and it felt as if I were reading these stories for the first time, although I did feel an inkling of familiarity, and I did not think, thankfully, that these stories were too difficult to understand.

Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, was first published in 1914, when Irish nationalism was at its peak.  I read several of the stories, in order (for the most part), starting with the opening story, The Sisters, which is a good introduction to this collection of stories, and to the work of James Joyce in a larger sense, in terms of the setting and the themes (Dublin, and religious issues, such as guilt).  Apparently, many of the characters in Dubliners reappear later in small roles in his novel, Ulysses.  The first few stories in Dubliners are narrated (in the first person) by young (child) protagonists, while subsequent stories focus on the lives of (progressively) older people, in accordance with James Joyce's tripartite division of development, from childhood to adolescence to maturity.  His stories often feature epiphanies, moments when main characters experience self-understanding or illumination.

My comments are general, as I read many stories in this collection, including The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby, and Eveline.  (I'll read more of the stories, including what has been called his best story, The Dead, which is also the last story in this collection.)  I was relieved to learn that James Joyce wrote exclusively (or almost exclusively) about Dublin, Ireland.  Since his work is focused on Dublin, I was able to remain in Dublin, rather than travel all over (there's a measure of comfort in going to a new place and staying there for a while).

Map of Dublin inside of the book

"For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.  In the particular is contained the universal."
~James Joyce

James Joyce's Irish experiences were essential to his writing and stories, which are set in Dublin.  In addition to being the setting, Dublin is also a "character" in these stories, and there are numerous descriptions of the streets of Dublin (as in the third story, Araby, which begins with a description of quiet North Richmond Street).  

Religion was a fixture in Dublin and is a strong theme in this collection of short fiction. In the first story, The Sisters, the narrator, a young boy, Jack, has just learned that his older friend, Father Flynn, has died of "paralysis".  In the second story, An Encounter, two poor boys throw rocks at the narrator and his friend, Mahony, and mistake them for Protestants (the tension between Catholics and Protestants is alluded to throughout the stories in Dubliners).  In the third story, Araby, the narrator, an unnamed boy, recalls the priest who died in the back drawing-room of the house before his family moved in.  Religion is heavily featured in these stories, which depict Irish middle class life in the early years of the 20th century. 


While reading, not surprisingly, I came across a few words to highlight for Wondrous Words Wednesday, a wonderful weekly wordie meme hosted by Kathy from BermudaOnion's Weblog.  Each of these words is from the first story in the book, The Sisters, and two of the words are related to religion.

Breviary, courtesy of Wikipedia

1. breviary: A breviary (from the Latin word brevis, meaning short or brief) is a book of the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church containing the public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons.

"Whenever I'd bring in his soup to him there, I'd find him with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in his chair with his mouth open."
~The Sisters, James Joyce

The word can also refer to a collection of Christian orders of prayers and readings, from Anglican or Lutheran resources. It may be used to refer to an abridged version of any text or a brief summary of some subject, but is usually used to refer to the Catholic liturgical book.


2. simoniac: a person who practices simony, which is the buying or selling of church offices or powers. 

"But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin." ~The Sisters, James Joyce

This word stems from Simon Magus (Acts 8:18), who tried to buy the power of conferring the gifts of the Holy Spirit from the Apostles.  Simony was said to have become widespread in Europe in the 10th –11th century, as promotions to the priesthood or episcopate were bestowed by monarchs and nobles, often in exchange for oaths of loyalty.  More widely, it's any contract of this kind forbidden by divine or ecclesiastical law.


3. truculent: eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant; savage

"His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur."
~The Sisters, James Joyce

I'm glad I looked this word up because I thought it meant thin or transparent (referring to facial skin), or something of that nature. The sentence above is the boy's description of the priest who has just died, Father James Flynn.

Have you read Dubliners, or other works by James Joyce?  As always, I welcome your comments.

Watering Heaven

"Anonymity was my secret identity.  I was lost in the sea of Beijing, a nonentity in the metaphor of a metropolis crammed with millions."
~The Buddha of Many Parts, Peter Tieryas Liu   


In The Buddha of Many Parts, the main characters, a man and a woman who meet by chance, are never named, and so they remain anonymous.  Both have their own reasons for living in Beijing, and seem to relish the freedoms that accompany anonymity in a very populous city.  Inspired by the story of the Buddha sculptor who sought to create physical perfection, the blond American woman living in Beijing focuses on the body parts of people, and having "fallen in love" with the man's fingers, wants to cast them in clay. 

Watering Heaven by Peter Tieryas Liu is a collection of twenty short stories, including The Buddha of Many Parts.  Published in 2012, the stories are set in various locations, mostly in Beijing, but also in other places including Bangkok and Los Angeles, and present numerous characters (some unnamed), in a variety of situations.  The stories that take place in China keenly depict Beijing and other locales, bringing them to life through descriptions of 'Worm Street', men playing xiangqi (Chinese chess), Changcheng (the Great Wall), assorted street vendors, kaoya (Peking Duck), and much more.

Dedicated to his wife, Angela, Watering Heaven features a lot of romance, which seems to be a refuge for the (young) protagonists, an escape from a world of detachment, superficiality, anxiety, and unpredictability.  In the first story,  Chronology of an Egg, the girl in the story, Sarah Chao, lays an egg every time she has sex.  This story is odd yet funny and compelling at the same time, a story that brings to mind the books of medical abnormalities I couldn't help but pore over, secretly, as a child.  Romance in a large city such as Beijing seems inevitable because of all the people out and about (perhaps it's  similar to NY in this way, where I grew up--romance was always handy); it offers some protection and diversion as well. These contemporary stories are set in present times and feature the technology of today, such as email and Facebook: how does modern technology affect romance?  In The Political Misconception of Getting Fired, the male protagonist, Byron Zhou, excitedly reconnects through Facebook with a girl he had a crush on in high school, June Guan, only to find out that they've both changed (he's no longer attracted to her).  This is a dauntless story for anyone who has ever wondered how a reunion through Facebook might turn out.

Other themes in this collection of stories have to do with jobs and working, and a hefty dose of job-related angst, failure, and dissatisfaction are in the mix, reminiscent of Kafka.  In some of the stories, characters are fleeing from jobs (and relationships) that are no longer satisfying.  In the story, Forbidden City Hoops, the main character, a collector of TV sets, is fleeing from his job as a photographer, which no longer seems fulfilling to him.  In another story, The Interview, the protagonist is let go from his current job for mistaking a masculine-looking female manager for a man.  An interview for a new job starts out very well--in fact, it's too good to be true.  Soon it becomes a dreadful nightmare when he's interrogated by a different manager and the questions become intensely personal; the entire encounter is extremely upsetting.  In the story 58 Deaths and Unrequited Love, filmmaker Larry Chao fails to achieve a successful career during his lifetime.  On the whole, the book stresses the importance of meaningful work and professional fulfillment, which are seen as worthwhile but difficult to achieve.  The author's edgy, exploratory voice and tone reflect more than a few unsettled feelings concerning jobs and working.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this collection of short fiction.  Each story is unique and imaginative, and not surprisingly, they've been featured in various literary publications and magazines, including Gargoyle, Indiana Review, Word Riot, and ZYZZYVA.  What I value most about these stories is their originality and inventiveness.  They seemed very creative and novel to me, strikingly different from anything else I've encountered in books. The format of the stories is also quite creative.  In the first story, Chronology of an Egg, the author gives dates and times of events within the story, as if he's writing a report.  Longer stories have numbered chapters, or at least sections within each story, while other stories, such as Colony, Unreflected, and The Death Artist, are very short (like longer flash fiction).

Peter Tieryas Liu's short fiction is fresh, distinct, and intelligent.  Watering Heaven presents situations that are sometimes surrealistic and often serious, but laced with humor and more than a bit of irony.  Although I just read these stories, I plan to reread at least some of them soon because they're so unusual, thought-provoking, and remarkable.

Special thanks to Peter Tieryas Liu for sending me a copy of Watering Heaven.  Your comments are welcome contributions to this review.

The Stinging Fly: Sweet Pea

Published in Dublin, Ireland three times a year, The Stinging Fly showcases the work of emerging writers, and features new Irish and international literary short fiction and poetry.  I won the spring 2012  edition of this literary magazine, edited by Declan Meade, on Mel's blog, The Reading Life, compliments of writer Ethel Rohan. Yesterday I received my copy in the mail, and last night I had a lovely time reading it in bed (with my ginger-hued Persian cat nestled at my side--sublime).  In this cozy manner, I read a good portion of the short stories in this publication, but have not read much of the poetry yet.



One of the stories I read was Sweet Pea, written by Ethel Rohan, who was born and raised in Dublin, but now resides in San Francisco.  In this story, which is set in Ireland, the main (unnamed) character, a married woman raising a family, has an odd bit of anatomy, a white wing in place of her right shoulder blade.  It's a very unusual and fascinating story, written in the first person, about this woman and her best friend, Betty, whose face glistens when she talks about her Sweet Pea plants, and who's building a dollhouse for her daughter, Melba.  Like many close friends, the women have zany little adventures together, and take a trip at the suggestion of their husbands, to an IRA training camp in the forest, where they feel free enough to do handstands. 

I was touched by this short story, which is about friendship, the passing of time, and loss. Since the author and I had been emailing back and forth, I asked her to tell me how she came up with the idea of the character's chicken-like wing.  Ethel took my query a step further, and graciously elaborated on the inspiration behind Sweet Pea.

ER: The story was triggered by something my dad told me while I was in Ireland last summer. He's an avid gardener and has the most amazing Sweet Pea plant in the back garden. The bright green and baby pink Sweet Pea climbs right up the back wall of his house. Dad described how the Sweet Pea grows tall and straight, and that it's only if and when the plant comes in contact with another flower or plant that it curls round and round that other object. That was the kernel that kicked off the story. Then, shortly after our return from Ireland, my husband built the most amazing wooden dollhouse for our daughter, so that was the second trigger for the story. As for the rest, the characters and ideas flowed right out.

Interestingly, I read the story a few months ago when I was in New York and afterwards one of the audience members said, "You got that white wing idea from Nights of the Circus!" I HAD read and loved Angela Carter's novel, Nights of the Circus, years ago while in college and had entirely forgotten that book and the white wing. So who knows what influences and stays at the subconscious level. There's also of course Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, that I also love and that no doubt helped fuel this story. There are so many books I've read but have largely forgotten. It's heartening to think that we never really forget these stories we read and that the works continue to nourish us long after (we think!) we've left them behind.

That is a heartening thought! Ethel, thank you for taking the time to give us this background information, and for sending me The Stinging Fly, a wonderful literary magazine.  Thanks also to The Reading Life for hosting Irish Short Story Week (now extended through July 1), which has helped me to discover both modern and contemporary Irish authors.

As always, your comments are welcomed.

Wondrous Words Wednesday: The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat

Writers of short fiction choose their words with great care and precision. Because they use few words to tell their stories, each and every word becomes more weighty, in a sense. In The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat (1911), a pithy short story by Saki, words are especially significant. I learned about the existence of this short story on Mel's blog, The Reading Life, where I'm often first introduced to sundry short stories.

As I read The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat, there were a few words that I thought I'd investigate for Wondrous Words Wednesday. Hosted by Kathy from Bermudaonion's Weblog, I enjoy this meme immensely; it's the consummate meme for wordsmiths, readers, dictionary fiends, and others who care deeply about words. My word discoveries this week enhanced my understanding and appreciation of the story.

1. snuggery: a small, cosy, comfortable room or place. The British spelling of 'cosy' seems more appropriate here, as this word is chiefly British. (Do my British book blogging friends read in their snuggeries? It sounds quite lovely, to curl up with a book in the snuggery!)

In the story there are several references to the snuggery, about which Jocantha Bessbury, the protagonist, announces her "simmering satisfaction", near the start of the story.

"She was very well pleased, for instance, with the snuggery, which contrived somehow to be cosy and dainty and expensive all at once."

"And as with the snuggery, so with the rest of the house, and as with the house, so with the other departments of Jocantha's life; she really had good reason for being one of the most contented women in Chelsea."

Married and comfortable, Jocantha is pleased with herself and her lot in life, and only wonders if her cat, Attab, may be more content than she is.

The snuggery takes on greater meaning in the context of the story, in both a literal and figurative way. Jocantha is very content, until she leaves the confines of her snuggery, of her small place. This word is perhaps the most important word of the entire story.


2. thraldom: slavery, thrall; the state of being under the control of another person.

I know I've come across this word before, maybe even on this meme, but I didn't remember it. In this sentence, Jocantha imagines the future of boy with the "beautifully-brushed" hair who has caught her eye.

"He would exchange that humdrum thraldom in due course for a home of his own, dominated by a scarcity of pounds shillings, and pence, and a dearth of most of the things that made life attractive or comfortable. "

In the story, Jocantha may discover that she is in a state of thraldom herself, bound to the comforts of marriage and home, to domesticity, to the cozy but confining "snuggery".


3. "Yellow Peacock"

In the story, Jocantha, starts to feel sorry for others, and decides to find a lonely girl in a tea-shop who she will then give two tickets to a performance of the "Yellow Peacock". I became curious, then suspicious, about the name of the play in the story; had it been an actual play in theaters? Luckily, I quickly discovered some relevant matters on Wikipedia's page of Theatrical Superstitions. First of all, peacock feathers are never supposed to be brought onstage, as a costume element, prop, or set piece. Actors and directors have blamed peacock feathers for all kinds of theater mishaps, including collapsing sets. The color yellow is also suspect. Yellow is considered to be quite unlucky. This belief dates from the days of religious plays, when yellow was the color worn by actors who played the devil.

The fact that the play in the story is called "Yellow Peacock", a less than fortuitous name for a play, makes this story, which is mocking in tone, even more comical.

I highly recommend The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat, which is about four pages long and can be read online. For a review of this story, please visit The Reading Life.

What wondrous new words have you encountered during recent reading?

Sundry Short Stories

While I don't think I'd enjoy reading a full-length novel online, I've enjoyed reading short stories online recently. Short fiction is perfect when you're pressed for time, or wish to sample the work of an author. Or, you may simply enjoy reading shorter works. Here is a list of links to short stories from various book blogs that I visit on a regular basis.

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A Doctor's Visit (1898) by Anton Chekhov on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

A Golden Wedding (1909-1922) by Lucy Maud Montgomery on Veens' blog, Giving Reading a Chance!!!

A Perfect Day for Bananafish (1948) by J.D. Salinger on Amanda's Blog, The Zen Leaf, and Veens' blog, Giving Reading a Chance!!!

A Respectable Woman (1894) by Kate Chopin on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

Black Death (1928) by Zora Neale Hurston on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

Death by Scrabble (2005) by Charlie Fish on Priya's blog, uniquely priya

Ghosts (2008) by Edwidge Danticat on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

Harrison Bergeron (1961) by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

Kew Gardens (1919) by Virginia Woolf from The Literature Network

Metropolis (2006) by Crystal Gail Shangkuan Koo on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

Monday or Tuesday (1921) by Virginia Woolf (for more short stories by Woolf, and the author's thoughts on short fiction, visit this post)
Visit The Reading Life Virginia Woolf Project for reviews and links to many other short stories by this author.

My Dear Miss Fairfax (early 1990's) by Nicola Slade on Veens' blog, Giving Reading a Chance!!!

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning (1981) by Haruki Murakami on Mee's blog, Bookie Mee

Quail Seed (1911) by Saki on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

Snow, Glass, Apples (1994) by Neil Gaiman on Amanda's blog, The Zen Leaf

The Artist of the Beautiful (1844) by Nathaniel Hawthorne on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Bet (1889) by Anton Chekhov on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Confession (1887) by Guy de Maupassant on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Garden Party (1922) by Katherine Mansfield on Mel's blog, The Reading Life
Visit The Reading Life Katherine Mansfield Project for reviews and links to many other short stories by this author.

The Gift of the Magi (1906) by O. Henry on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Little Match Girl (1845) by Hans Christian Andersen on Veens' blog, Giving Reading a Chance!!!

The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Monkey's Paw (1902) by W. W. Jacobs on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Open Window (1870-1916) by Saki on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat (1911) by Saki on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Shot (1831) by Alexander Pushkin on Mel's blog, The Reading Life

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe on Naida's blog, the bookworm

The Tower Room (early 1990's) by Nicola Slade on Veens' blog, Giving Reading a Chance!!!

The Withered Arm (1888) by Thomas Hardy on Mel's blog, The Reading Life, and Mrs. B's blog, The Literary Stew

Tony Takitani (2002) by Haruki Murakami on Michelle's blog, su(shu) a girl finds comfort in her books

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Please feel free to add links to other short stories in the comments, which I'll add to this post. I may also add other short story links every so often. Thanks for reading!

Beyond the Cayenne Wall: Exotic Short Fiction

Last month I had the pleasure to review Saffron Dreams and to interview the author, Shaila Abdullah.

This month I read her debut book, Beyond the Cayenne Wall: Collection of Short Stories, published in 2005, which received the Jury Prize for Outstanding Fiction--the highest award in the Norumbega Fiction Awards--and the DIY Convention Award.

Although you don't typically find short fiction on summer reading lists, short stories are perfect for a morning at the beach, or an evening on the porch. My problem with short stories is that I tend to race through them, one right after the next. I finished reading Beyond the Cayenne Wall all too quickly, and longed for another story.

In Beyond the Cayenne Wall, Shaila Abdullah presents short stories about the often tumultuous lives of young women in Karachi, Pakistan. She brings Pakistan's largest city to life with vivid, descriptive prose, and even includes a glossary of Urdu words used in the book. These stories are not for the faint-of-heart. Each story is poignant and gives us an intimate look into the hearts and minds of seven Pakistani women:

Tannu, who's not allowed to seek work outside of the house, because she's seen as a "prized cow", an "incubator" for prospective offspring, but who fails to conceive.

Dhool, who's married to a man willing to allow his eleven-year-old daughter to get married to a rich old man.

Minnah, on the brink of marriage, who worries greatly about the secret she carries in her heart.

Shiwali, who's just going through the motions out of duty in a loveless marriage.

Siham, who wants to know the truth about her biological family, especially her father.

Mansi, who brings her aging mother from Pakistan to Texas to live with her.

Nyssa, who fears she will have to give back her beloved child, Vera.

Although these stories are fictional, they're based on the traditional way of life in Pakistan, which includes arranged marriages and limited roles for women. After reading this absorbing collection of short stories, I found myself grateful for the many freedoms I enjoy, and too often take for granted.

These haunting stories will remain in my heart and mind for years to come.

If you've read Beyond the Cayenne Wall or have a related comment or question, I'd enjoy hearing from you.

All in Together Girls: Artful Short Fiction

I'm a glutton. Instead of reading one story in All In Together Girls and then stopping to digest it before reading the next one, I'm reading them straight through, voraciously, without pausing to reflect on what's happened in any particular story. I should slow down, will slow down, and savor each one. They are quite engaging--stories about youth and self-discovery and relationships and all that good stuff. The author, Kate Sutherland, writes with an honest voice and doesn't sugarcoat emotions. She's also a law professor. That floors me! I'm reminded of Alexander McCall Smith, the very prolific author of over sixty books--he's also a law professor. (Is there a connection here? How do these two different types of writing--legal and creative--complement each other?)

Published as a collection of short fiction in 2007, All in Together Girls tells fourteen different stories and rapidly draws us into different worlds. Kate Sutherland brings the characters to life for us--children, teenagers, and adults--and we feel the pain and triumph of various human struggles. Short story writing is an extremely creative form of creative writing, which presents unique challenges to writers because of the length of the stories--everyone and everything needs to be "accelerated", in a sense. Kate Sutherland proves she's up to the challenge, and is on a par with women such as Doris Lessing, Alice Munro, and Eudora Welty. The cliché, "good things come in small packages" proves true here; through her short stories she paints memorable portraits of everyday people in All in Together Girls. You can sample two of her stories, Cool and Aerial View of a Dinner Party, on Kate's Book Blog.

Virginia Woolf

Last night I relaxed in "reading bed" with my daughter (she fell asleep next to me) and finished The Hidden Target. It's an exciting book, and I'm glad to have had the experience of reading something different from my usual choices.

Eager for more moments of illumination, I'm now ready to delve into other books and stories, fiction and non-fiction, that have been waiting for my attention. I think Women & Fiction: Short Stories by and about Women will hold my interest because I've already read some of it and was completely transfixed by Virginia Woolf's short story, The New Dress, in which the protagonist, Mabel Waring, expresses great angst and feels awkward in the "idiotically old-fashioned" new dress she has had made and wears to an afternoon tea. Such honesty! (What woman has not felt that her own choice of clothing was wrong at some time?)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) English novelist and essayist, was Adeline Virginia Stephen prior to her marriage to writer Leonard Woolf in 1912. She was both a feminist and a modernist. Her novels often departed from traditional plots to follow the inner lives and musings of her characters. A writer of extreme sensitivity and talent, Virginia Woolf may have been bipolar; she struggled with her own heightened awareness (like the main character in the New Dress), and bouts of depression, and ended her own life by drowning herself in a river, weighed down by stones in her pockets.

Photo from Wikipedia.

The New Dress

Even though I'm in the middle of another book, I couldn't resist reading the Virginia Woolf section of Women & Fiction: Short Stories By and About Women. Born in London in 1882, Virginia Woolf was educated at home, and had the benefit of her father's great library, as well as the company of her father's friends, prominent people such as Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Ruskin.

In the introduction of Women & Fiction editor Susan Cahill quotes Virginia Woolf:

". . . living as she did in the common sitting-room, surrounded by people, a women was trained to use her mind in observation and upon the analysis of character. She was trained to be a novelist and not be a poet."
~Granite and Rainbow, Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf believed that women were better suited to write novels rather than poetry because of their role in society as observers in parlors and sitting-rooms, rather than adventurers out in the world that "belonged" to men. Woolf's fiction centers around the consciousness of women--their thoughts, the people and relationships in their lives, and social appearances and customs. This was her world, her experience, and although it may have been limiting in certain respects, she used her sensitivity to generate a prolific career as a fiction writer. Women & Fiction features her short story, The New Dress, in which the main character, Mabel Waring, agonizes over her decision to wear her new dress to an afternoon tea at Mrs. Dalloway's. It's brutally honest and real, and painful to read as Mabel, who feels like a "dowdy, decrepit, horribly dingy old fly" reveals her true thoughts and insecurities.

Written in 1924 (but not published until 1927), The New Dress is one of Virginia Woolf's most popular short stories, still widely read today; you can even read it online. What did Virginia Woolf think about short stories? She never prioritized this genre, although she wrote short fiction throughout her writing career. For Virginia Woolf, short stories may have been projects to sustain her between novels. Her husband, Leonard Woolf, said she "used at intervals to write short stories. It was her custom, whenever an idea for one occurred to her, to sketch it out in a very rough form and then to put it away in a drawer. Later, if an editor asked her for a short story, and she felt in the mood to write one (which was not frequent), she would take a sketch out of her drawer and rewrite it, sometimes a great many times. Or if she felt, as she often did, while writing a novel that she required to rest her mind by working on something else for a time, she would either write a critical essay or work upon one of her sketches for short stories." In 1921, Virginia and Leonard Woolf published Monday or Tuesday, (which you can read online), a volume of eight short stories, the only collection of Woolf's stories published during her lifetime.

Monday or Tuesday

• The Mark On The Wall
• A Haunted House
• A Society
• Monday Or Tuesday
• An Unwritten Novel
• The String Quartet
• Blue & Green
• Kew Gardens