Short Stories

"Clutter", a short story I wrote for the CWA anthology Original Sins, is due to be published shortly in the latest volume of The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime edited by the tireless Maxim Jakubowski. It's one of my darkest stories, it has to be said, very different in tone and subject matter from, say, the Harry Devlin books or the Lake District Mysteries. But the central idea seemed to me well suited to the short form.

A fellow contributor is Nigel Bird, whose Sea Minor blog features on my blogroll, and he kindly invited me to answer a few crisp questions about short stories.

A word about that marvellous short story "The Lottery". By coincidence, this morning I've received from that excellent bookseller Jamie Sturgeon a copy of a book by Shirley Jackson in which she describes the baffled reaction to that amazing story after it first appeared in The New Yorker. She makes many thoughtful comments about both writing and reading that also have a bearing on some current discussions about reviewing on the blogosphere. Fascinating topic,and one I'll return to in future.

Short Stories and Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff is a significant figure in the literary world, but I must confess, a writer I haven’t got round to reading in the past. The other day, though, I was given a copy of his short story ‘The Chain’, taken from a collection called The Night in Question, with the recommendation that I’d like it.

And I did. The opening is dramatic – a man called Gold, who owns a not very successful video shop, sees a vicious dog on a chain (but an excessively long one) lunge after his young daughter, with potentially disastrous consequences. Gold rescues the girl, who is not harmed, but the incident preys on his mind. He confides in a friend who offers to deal with the dog. And after hesitating, Gold accepts the offer.

This sets off a chain of events (‘chain’ has a double significance in this story) which leads to murder. There’s a touch of Strangers on a Train about the first part of the story, but overall the effect is highly distinctive. I enjoyed it, and I will definitely read more Tobias Wolff.

In fact, reading ‘The Chain’ reminded how much I love short stories – even if they don’t fall within the conventional parameters of the crime genre. I have a great many favourites, but possibly the number one in my list is another story which isn’t conventional ‘crime fiction’ and yet deals with a sort of crime. It is Shirley Jackson’s brilliant ‘The Lottery’.

So, I wonder, what is your favourite short story?