In her latest collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Knopf), Russell traffics in her now-trademark wit. In eight tightly drawn stories, she imagines fantastical worlds that stem from the bleakest realities.
“Slow and rich and so atmospheric that you can taste the ocean’s salt spray on your lips, ‘The Boat’ is run through with that rarest of qualities in fiction: the story feels mythic”: Joshua Bodwell on Alistair MacLeod’s short fiction.
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of “First Looks,” which highlights soon-to-be (or just) released books that have piqued our interest as readers-who-write. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, we’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. So please drop us a line with buzz-worthy titles you’re anticipating: editors(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com. Thanks in advance! Though we devote the entire month of May to celebrating short stories, there are still plenty of great collections that slip through the cracks. I guess it’s a good […]
“Dick” is a snorter, a mean cackler, a muffled hooter. It’s a story to read on the subway home from a maddening staff meeting, or on your front steps after a surreal and unpleasant interaction with a neighbor, or to prepare for a holiday with extended family. Ann Ponders (har har) moves her husband and son from L.A. to Colorado, hoping to leave everything unnerving behind: her snorting, smoking daughter Lizzie, “clever and duplicitous” in “the whole smooth suit of skin she wore without thinking”; her Alzheimer’s-addled mother, now in a nursing home; her young son’s best friend, Dick, who […]
During a past Short Story Month, I suggested five ways we might celebrate short stories. Topping the list was this recommendation: Participate in #StorySunday: Reminded each Sunday by @TaniaHershman, short-story fans are encouraged to share a link via Twitter to someone else’s short story using the hashtag #StorySunday. Quick. Painless. Free. Click here to see the latest #StorySunday tweets. Three years after the London-born Hershman launched it, #StorySunday is still going strong. To celebrate Short Story Month 2013, I decided to check in with her to learn more about the hashtag. She graciously took time from her busy schedule (which […]
Once upon a time in Seattle I lived with a lawyer, a librarian, an engineer, and a retailer. We threw dance-y parties and hosted champagne and apricot scone brunches. We read by the fireplace and played after dinner games of Settlers of Catan. And although we did not know one another prior to moving in together—we met the old-fashion way, on craigslist—we became close. It started with the lawyer, and after a time the whole house was online dating. They, like many twenty-odds, were using OkCupid—“the Google of online dating.” Soon, our wholesome after dinner board games changed to after […]
Happy Short Story Month 2013! Once again, we’ll be celebrating short stories all month here at Fiction Writers Review: Reviews of fantastic story collections, such as Jamie Quatro’s debut I Want to Show You More, which is our lead feature for the month. We’re also excited to publish reviews of Ethan Rutherford‘s The Peripatetic Coffin, Karen Russell‘s Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and several others that we’ve been saving for Short Story Month. Interviews with established writers like Charles Yu, debut authors like Sarah Gerkensmeyer, whose collection What You Are Now Enjoying is currently longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International […]
Over the course of these stories, a conviction emerges: faith and lust are not unalike.
Alas, it’s May 31, so this concludes your Short Story Month 2012 coverage here at Fiction Writers Review! Miss a post—or need something to carry you over until we do it again next year? Here’s a mini-index: Reviews: This Will Be Difficult to Explain, by Johanna Skibsrud: “Although the book feels light in the hand, the stories pack a concentrated, emotional punch.” This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, by John McGregor: “This collection takes the reader in hand, big, sometimes-inexplicable things happen and you may not make it out alive. McGregor’s stories are anything […]
In the illuminating introduction to her Selected Stories, Alice Munro considers the recurring setting of her fiction: “The reason I write so often about the country to the east of Lake Huron is just that I love it.” She goes on to describe how memories of particular images from that geography will motivate her stories in their earliest, most daydreamy forms. For instance, Munro describes the image of “snow falling straight down” that served as the seed of a story. In its finished form, there’s no reference to that image, no trace for the reader to dwell on, but all […]
