My ten favourite short stories
Mar. 26th, 2014 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sheenaghpughI could never do this with poems; there are too many and I change my mind too much. But stories... yes. Here they are, with links where possible.
1, Anton Chekhov: Easter Eve. Not an unaware narrator, but what you might call an unaware protagonist, who tells more than he means to, or even knows himself, with every word.
2. Anton Chekhov: Home. Look, Chekhov is the guvnor, right? Of course he gets more than one! This is a story about the difference between truth, lies and fiction.
3. Rudyard Kipling: They. I didn't know the real-life background to this story when I first read it. It didn't matter.
4. Tove Jansson: Taking Leave (from A Winter Book). A story about letting go of things. Immensely spare and moving.
5. George Eliot: Brother Jacob. Is it a long short story? A short novella? Whatever: it's laugh-out-loud funny and the only story I know about the evils of convenience food.
6. Marcel Aymé: Legend of Poldevia. It's an odd thing; most French writers aren't notable for humour but just now and then you get one like Tristan Corbière or Marcel Aymé who's a whizz at it. And humorists say the most profound things...
7. Ilse Aichinger: Spielgelgeschichte. First piece of prose I ever read that was written backwards; from the protagonist's death to her birth. A long time before Amis, too.
8. Rudyard Kipling: The Wish House. So Kipling's the deputy guvnor. Staggering ventriloquism, amongst other things.
9. Saki: Birds on the Western Front. What happens when a highly observant, sensitive, cynical funny-man goes to war.
10. Petronius: The Tale of the Widow of Ephesus. OK,. it's part of a novel but also a short story in its own right, and a lovely example of structure and the difference between writer and narrator.
1, Anton Chekhov: Easter Eve. Not an unaware narrator, but what you might call an unaware protagonist, who tells more than he means to, or even knows himself, with every word.
2. Anton Chekhov: Home. Look, Chekhov is the guvnor, right? Of course he gets more than one! This is a story about the difference between truth, lies and fiction.
3. Rudyard Kipling: They. I didn't know the real-life background to this story when I first read it. It didn't matter.
4. Tove Jansson: Taking Leave (from A Winter Book). A story about letting go of things. Immensely spare and moving.
5. George Eliot: Brother Jacob. Is it a long short story? A short novella? Whatever: it's laugh-out-loud funny and the only story I know about the evils of convenience food.
6. Marcel Aymé: Legend of Poldevia. It's an odd thing; most French writers aren't notable for humour but just now and then you get one like Tristan Corbière or Marcel Aymé who's a whizz at it. And humorists say the most profound things...
7. Ilse Aichinger: Spielgelgeschichte. First piece of prose I ever read that was written backwards; from the protagonist's death to her birth. A long time before Amis, too.
8. Rudyard Kipling: The Wish House. So Kipling's the deputy guvnor. Staggering ventriloquism, amongst other things.
9. Saki: Birds on the Western Front. What happens when a highly observant, sensitive, cynical funny-man goes to war.
10. Petronius: The Tale of the Widow of Ephesus. OK,. it's part of a novel but also a short story in its own right, and a lovely example of structure and the difference between writer and narrator.
