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Dear Elizabeth, The collection Gothic Tales, edited by Laura Kranzler (2000), comprises your most famous ghost stories published from 1851 to 1861. Reading those stories is like…… Read more “Solitary and savage had been her life”
Tag: Short stories
Sitting deep in the human heart
Dear Selma, Your short-story collection Invisible Links, tr. Pauline Bancroft Flach (1899. Original: Osynliga länkar,1894) reads like a visit to one of those Scandinavian wooden churches, decorated with…… Read more “Sitting deep in the human heart”
Every traveller’s time is a lot of times in one
Dear Olga, Flights, tr. Jennifer Croft (2017. Original: Bieguni, 2007) reads very much like one of the cabinets of curiosities it alludes to: each story is like…… Read more “Every traveller’s time is a lot of times in one”
The various crimes of sadness
Dear Fleur, Most of the twenty-one stories in your collection I Am the Brother of XX, tr. Gini Alhadeff (2017. Original: Sono il fratello di XX, 2014) have a…… Read more “The various crimes of sadness”
Don’t ever wait for the swallows,
Dear Larissa, Your short story collection Swallow Summer, translated by Lyn Marven (2016. Originally, Schwalbensommer, 2003) made me think of tracks made of air: we might know they…… Read more “Don’t ever wait for the swallows,”
it was clear as a streetcar: I am a flower
“Triumph of Love II – by Belcampo When the wind blew over the village, it also blew across the impenetrable woods, and the castle within, which was…… Read more “it was clear as a streetcar: I am a flower”
but thousands of bells clanged inside me
Dear Clarice, Rereading your stories after so long makes me feel as if I were looking through colour-stained glass: each story comes with the shadow of my…… Read more “but thousands of bells clanged inside me”
And the book had broken right open
Dear Ali, Your most recent collection of short stories, framed around the massive closures of public libraries in the UK, borrows its core from the very idea…… Read more “And the book had broken right open”
She looks at him and feels happy, but the happiness is heavy
Dear Mary, Each of the women who inhabit your new collection of stories, Always Happy Hour (2017), is different in her own small way – and yet…… Read more “She looks at him and feels happy, but the happiness is heavy”
The line of light marking the bottom of the locked door
Dear Lori, Your short-story collection The Bigness of the World (2009, 2016) followed me throughout a very pleasant trip by bike I made last May. I confess it…… Read more “The line of light marking the bottom of the locked door”
‘I couldn’t ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection’
Dear Djuna, This letter should have been written back in February, when I read your book Smoke and Other Early Stories, but I kept postponing it, and…… Read more “‘I couldn’t ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection’”
The thing that was your bright treasure
Dear Alice, In each of the stories collected in your book Runaway (2004), the characters find themselves, in one way or another, confronted either with the desire…… Read more “The thing that was your bright treasure”
