April/May 2012
This month we have a special bonus 11th review for you - partly because, due to technical issues, we had to combine April and May's editions so we thought you deserved it, and partly in honour of both the first ever National Flash Fiction Day (May 16th in the UK) and National Short Story Month in the US (Check out the blog posts on the Emerging Writers Network and the Short Story Collection Giveaway Project on the Fiction Writers Review).

Our own offerings include a novel-in-flash stories an anthology of "sudden" fiction to whet your appetite for National Flash Fiction Day, a collection of linked stories in translation from German, short stories inspired by modern science,  some smoke, a little true surrealism, a hint of cape cod noir, a tour around London's boroughs as if it was just, yesterday,and some short dark oracles to offset the things we didn't see coming.


Congratulations! to Short Review author Kevin Barry, winner of this year's Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award, his new collection is forthcoming. Congratulations to the winners of this year's Scott Prize, Carys Bray and Rob Roensch, whose debut collections will be published by Salt publishing. And congratulations to those on the Edge Hill Short Story Prize shortlist (announced today, May 9th!) and Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award longlists - the two major European awards for short story collections -  including Short Review authors Nina Allan, Shannon Cain, Stanley Donwood, Nathan Englander, Stuart Evers, Orfhlaith Foyle, Etgar Keret, Erina Mettler, Courttia Newland, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Edna O'Brien, Rob Shearman, our own Short Review editor Tania Hershman ... and many more! 

Reviews
New Sudden Fiction
  edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas

   "This is the limit of my limits: here it is. You don’t ever know for sure where it is and then you bump against it and bam, you’re there. Because I cannot bear to look down into the water and not be able to find him at all, to search the tiny clear waves with a microscope lens and to locate my lover, the one-celled wonder, bloated and bordered, brainless, benign, heading clear and small like an eye-floater into nothingness."
"I loved this collection – it is probably the definitive gathering of sudden stories, marrying big names with unknowns, to positive and unusual effect..." Read the full review  by James Murray-White

Litmus: Short Stories From Modern Science
  edited by Ra Page

   "Scientists are often taught to be and are often temperamentally inclined to be wary of metaphor; that way magic lies; or poetry. But the human imagination can hardly be its own enemy. I immersed myself in poetry from childhood and would quote it throughout my life when the occasion arose."
"Rarely has the broad narrative of scientific discovery been so closely allied with the narrative of human history and belief as in this fine collection of stories..." Read the full review  by Sue Haigh

True Surrealism
by Christopher Klim

"At night I recall beautiful Nepal, just before the life I am living today. It is so close to my current life that it sometimes overlaps with recent memories. Nepal was similar to Tennessee with rolling hills and green as far as the birds flew, but the Nepalese seemed happier with their hills..."
"Klim’s narrative voice is unique – haunting and deeply engaging. His dialogue is both sharp and striking - a real treat for the intelligent reader..." Read the full review by Daniela Norris

Cape Cod Noir
  edited by David L Ulin

"I was minding my own business. I was at home watching television. The show was a police drama. Everyone told me it was fantastic. I didn’t see the appeal. The older detective was always shouting at the younger detective… The female detective wore her uniform comically tight."
"Crime writers are responsible for some of fiction’s best narrative tricks, as a skim through this anthology will testify. From red herrings to unreliable narrators and twists to give you whiplash, it’s all here..." Read the full review by Sarah Hilary

London 33: Boroughs Stories: Volume 1: East
  by Various Authors

"'Look around you, Miss, at the grandeur and the decrepit, the new and the old living side by side. ‘The stoic, the falling down and the newly born.' Ethna leaned over the railings and wondered if he was talking about buildings or people.'And listen out for the stories carried on the wind by the ghosts that were here before us. Some of it’s ugly, I grant you, but some of it takes your breath away'..."
"Lively stories about ordinary Londoners in a city on the brink of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games..." Read the full review by Sheila Cornelius

Short Dark Oracles
  by Sara Levine

"In place of my feelings, substitute the emptiness of a rain barrel, its wood drying out, its metal staves creaking, an arid silence after two years of learning to hold the rain..."
"Short Dark Oracles is a captivating and gripping read that leaves the reader on the edge of all emotions not knowing whether to laugh, cry or just be incredibly disturbed!" Read the full review by Emma Young

It Was Just, Yesterday
  by Mirja Unge
Translated by Kari Dickson

" Iron Maiden screamed and my head thumped against the arm of the sofa, thump thump against the arm, and I said nothing, I did nothing."
"An interesting and evocative look at the psychological impact of cultural issues facing teenage girls and young women today..." Read the full review by Kate Kerrow

Smoke and Other Early Stories
  by Djuna Barnes

"'Billy,' she said, and her voice was cold and practical, 'I couldn’t ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection.'..."
"Smoke, which collects some of Djuna Barnes’s early stories, revels in quirkiness and subtle wordplay to reveal that the unexpected is all too plausible..." Read the full review by Patrick Henry

From The Umberplatzen
   by Susan Tepper

"You have no stars left, he said. When we met you were all stars. They have fizzled and fallen to earth, I said."
"A different kind of love story, a different kind of novel..." Read the full review by Alex Thornber

Alice
  by Judith Hermann
 
"But in one of the jackets from the cellar she found something she was utterly unprepared for – even though she’d tried to be prepared for everything. It was something small, it was almost as if Raymond had left it for her – a crumpled paper bag from a bakery containing the remnant of a little almond horn. The curved end of the little crescent, so old as to be almost petrified. And like a shell in a fossil, a smooth almond silver top..."
"Not quite a novel, retaining the brevity of conciseness of a short story, yet following a single character, as one does in a novel. Alice fulfils this aim perfectly in clear simply prose. " Read the full review by Arja Salafranca

Things We Didn't See Coming
  by Steven Amsterdam
 
"The future is a hospital, packed with sick people, packed with hurt people,people on stretchers in the halls, and suddenly the lights go out, the water shuts off and you know in your heart that they’re never coming back on. That’s the future, my friend..."
"Amsterdam's bleak outlook on the not-too-distant future gives us a protagonist of extraordinary fortitude battling a chain of grisly catastrophes..." Read the full review by Sara Baume


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The Short Review shines the spotlight on short story collections, new and older, across all genres, styles, publishers and countries. Each month we review 10 books and interview as many of their authors as possible.... Read more>>






Author Interviews

"The Theft the Got Me Here was the first story I wrote for Things We Didn't See Coming. When I wrote the last line of it, I realized that I was really just beginning with this narrator. So then I wrote  Steven Amsterdam

Author of Things We Didnt See Coming
Best Medicine, setting it when he's older and the world has changed again. This is when I saw that I was writing about this one narrator at different times in his life and across different speculative landscapes. The first story was printed in the Sleepers Almanac while I wrote the second. By the time the second story was printed, I had written almost all of the nine stories/chapters..."
Read the rest of the interview >>

"Starting round April of last year, I wrote the first flash-fiction. It got published pretty quickly. That prompted me to write the same characters in another story, shortly after, and that was  Susan Tepper

Author of
From The Umberplatzen
published quickly too. So then I was hooked on these two characters and began to write one flash a day. There are 48 in total. So counting a little lag time with the first two stories being published, it took me about 2 months to write this book."
Read the rest of the interview >>


"The audience is an idealized reader—probably a smarter, less tolerant, ruthless version of me. Someone who's tapping her toe and saying, "What ever made you  Sara Levine

Author of Short Dark Oracles
think I would be interested?"

 Read the rest of the interview >>


"Over the years, I've learned that the interpretations people have regarding my work are only a transference of their own thoughts projected upon me. Sometimes they come Christopher Klim

Author of True Surrealism
close to my thinking while writing the story, but most often they do not. It's only important that people first enjoy the story and then they are moved in some way. It's what you do later with the things you learn now that matters..."
Read the rest of the interview >>