Stories We Love: “The Summer People,” by Shirley Jackson
“Soon matters take an even darker turn.” Jacob M. Appel on Shirley Jackson’s most unsettling short story.
“Soon matters take an even darker turn.” Jacob M. Appel on Shirley Jackson’s most unsettling short story.
“And yet, it works. Not only does it work, it’s essential to the story. The form is the story.” Kent Kosack takes a look at Bernard Malamud’s puzzling POV-shifter, “My Son the Murderer.”
“How the writer views the world, their unique angle of vision, is what can draw us in by inviting us to briefly leave behind our familiar vantage point.” Kent Kosack on the power of observation in Dorthe Nors’s “The Heron.”
“But there is a catch, a move du Maurier makes that transforms the story from a claustrophobic exploration of gender confinement and powerlessness to something stranger and more sinister”: In this Stories We Love essay, Michael Shou-Yung Shum takes on Daphne du Maurier’s “Blue Lenses.”
“Driscoll was a poet before turning to fiction. Poetic language is dreamlike, and therefore suited to close narration. And Driscoll’s elegant language anchors the reader in the haunting dream.”
“This is the last gift of King’s story—her decision to allow happiness to have the last word, to make the ephemeral feeling permanent, if only in fiction”: Lillian Li on Lily King’s One Story story.
Every time I read this story I get a thrill, the sensation of having to hold on tight for a wild, plummeting ride, a dizzying shift in perspective, a cascade of questions that I can’t answer.
“His fiction is baffling and fresh enough to revert even experienced readers back into novices”: Eric McDowell on metafiction and writing lessons in César Aira’s “The All That Ploughs through the Nothing.” Aira’s latest in translation, The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof, comes out today from New Directions.
“The author gives us just what she promised: more than meets the eye”: Mari Carlson on Becky Hagenston’s “Scavengers.”
From the Archives: “Grace Paley shows us one way in which the heretofore old-fashioned, third-person omniscient perspective might be one of contemporary fiction writers’ greatest tools to elicit empathy for characters.”
