In my recent reading, it’s been as much about how the story is told as it’s been about the story itself. This certainly isn’t a new idea—these examples span three decades—but sometimes the phenomenon is more prevalent in my stacks. Maybe you’ve read some of these, or maybe
This is the shortest in the cycle of Carette family stories, available to read online, with a short introduction by Lynne Tillman, on the Center for Fiction’s website. It’s one of their “model stories”—for good reason. It’s concise, yet still manages to highlight so many of Gallant’s trademarks: acute
Despite the rather long title, the core idea of this novel is succinct: “Your truth is not more fucking true than my truth.” Megan Gail Coles situates her story around a downtown restaurant in St. John’s Newfoundland. There, a handful of characters, who are navigating the daily grind, present
Kaplan, McKay, Puntí, Rosenfarb and Shapton Short Stories in July, August, and September Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to two favourite writers and also explored three new-to-me story writers.
We have to assume that Speck came first, with “Speck’s Idea” published in 1979. “Overhead in a Balloon” was published five years later (both stories in the pages of “The New Yorker”, where the majority of Mavis Gallant’s stories appeared before they were bound into collections). So we have
