Tag: Short Stories

Review: Tiny Shoes Dancing and Other Stories by Audrey Kalman

This book of short stories by Audrey Kalman really resonated with me.  The stories are different but deal with common issues, most related to marriage and family.  Divorce was a frequent story element, and it was really interesting to see divorce explored from a number of different perspectives.  Kalman looks at how family turmoil affects…

Review: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

It’s tempting to compare this book to What it Means When A Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah.  Both are debut short story collections from diverse authors, and both blend contemporary and speculative fiction.  I enjoyed both, and I’m not a big reader of short stories normally, but I’m coming to appreciate…

Review: What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

I loved this book of short stories.  Arimah has a really vivid way of telling a story, and her stories covered a wide range of issues and genres.  The title story was one of the most interesting.  The narrator is a mathematician in a future post-apocalyptic world where most of the continents are now underwater. …

Review of Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to, mainly because the stories are a surprising combination of everyday life, tragedy, and humor.  The stories focus on black identity in a powerful way, but this is far from a one-issue book. Thompson-Spires covers body issues, bullying, friendship, parenthood, and therapy, just to name a few. …

Artefacts and Other Stories by Rebecca Burns

This is the third collection of stories by author Rebecca Burns, after Catching the Barramundi and The Settling Earth.  Like The Settling Earth, these are short glimpses into interesting characters and situations, each one leaving the reader wanting more.  Unlike The Settling Earth, the stories take place across a range of times and locations. A number of the…

Some Possible Solutions by Helen Phillips

If you thought The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a strange book, Helen Phillips’ new book of short stories is even stranger, but it’s a really fun, and memorable read.  These are short stories, almost vignettes in some places, experimental in others. It’s always hard to review a book of short stories, but in this book you…

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood

It’s always exciting to get a new Margaret Atwood, and this one didn’t disappoint, although it’s very different from her recent MaddAddam trilogy. Stone Mattress is a book of nine short stories. Atwood says they are really “tales” and are meant to “evoke the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago…

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, and the basis for a recent miniseries starring Frances McDormand. It’s a book that falls somewhere between a novel and short stories, a trend I’m seeing a lot of lately. The stories take place in the small town of Crosby, Maine, and Olive is the…

Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs

Patricia Briggs is my favorite “series” writer.  I try to read everything she writes, and that’s unusual for me.  I mostly read a few books from a series and then move on to another one, and I ignore all the extra short stories and novellas that seem more for marketing purposes than to further the…

The Settling Earth: Short Stories by Rebecca Burns

Last year I read Rebecca Burns’ collection of short stories, Catching the Barramundi, and I was so wowed by it I was happy to receive her latest work for review. The Settling Earth is a collection of short stories all set in the same time and place, a small settler’s community in New Zealand in…