Essential Short Stories

If you’ve been within 1 square mile of Storysmith recently you have probably heard me raving about Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel, Headshot. She’s the sort of writer that makes a story, especially character writing, seem totally effortless. Her short story collection, Belly Up, published in the UK for the first time this year, is more of the same genius on display and feels like a sister text rather than a predecessor. The stories are super wide-ranging, often sitting in the space between the real and unreal, but jumping from the profound but quotidian to the fully otherworldly, ultimately unified by consistency of theme: questions of the body, the soul, and the fragile and contingent ways in which we self-define, which is actually concisely summed up by the title of one of the stories “What Would I Be If I Wasn’t What I Am?”. A perfect reading experience all round. 

Yan Ge’s first English language collection makes for such unexpectedly perfect juxtapositions: intimate and observational character stories set in modern day Dublin and Stockholm; sweeping and meticulous political intrigues in medieval China; the sharply realist and the semi-ethereal. This might sound a bit whip-lash inducing, but Elsewhere is a masterfully consistent collection of stories about language, belonging and estrangement – and features the only story we’ve ever read that so heavily revolves around using a breast pump. (Seriously, it’s so brilliant).

Thomas Morris’s second short story collection is just as killer as his debut. These are five profound, deeply affecting, and tightly written short stories. Realist, for the most part, with just the right amount of reality-bending shenanigans – veering into the slightly surreal in order to express something psychologically and emotionally true about our inner lives, the human condition, the nature of the soul… all the good stuff!

This short story collection was my first introduction into Kazakh Literature, which, at once felt novel and new in culture and geography, but also incredibly familiar in the tone/plot of the stories Sarmekova tells. Each story weaves together Kazakh traditions, landscapes, auls, and tois, with something more universal, the commonality of the human condition and the strange satire of daily life. These stories are all poignant and concise snapshots of life, threading together modern with the traditional, the unchanged and the unrecognisable, the melancholic with the hopeful. 

Afterparties is a warm-hearted, bold collection of interconnecting stories about Cambodian-American lives. The stories express the joy and messiness and pain and love of real lives, families striving to make ends meet, to feel fulfilled, and to hang on to some semblance of Cambodian cultural heritage whilst trying to achieve the American dream; a mechanic whose business is failing because he wants to offer jobs to his whole community, a high school teacher who can’t move on from his dream of being a badminton star, cousins trying to psyche themselves up to attend a relative’s reincarnation party. 

Anthony Veasna So’s writing is so full of heart, he navigates the nuanced topics of immigration, race and sexuality with a sharp wit and tender understanding. Afterparties is sadly the only published collection from this talented writer whose career was just about to start when he passed away in 2020.

In his debut collection, Callum Angus presents a series of short stories united by the theme of transition, which challenge the notion that trans people can have only one transition. His stories are suffused with magic, beauty, occasional horror and a palpable reverence for the natural world. Somehow, even the stories that are unsettling, remain beautiful and tender. These could be read as a kind of guide book toward accepting change, in all its respects – in its horror and goodness. Evidently, this is a very special book indeed.

In 2021 it seemed as if the short story collection was having a kind of moment, and Filthy Animals was certainly one of the best to emerge at this time. We already knew Brandon Taylor was a star, but boy did this blow us away. The stories across this collection are linked, with characters reoccurring and weaving in and out of the narratives. In one story, Lionel is discharged from hospital and attends a party-where he meets and is drawn to the magnetic Charles and Sophie. In another, a childminder is driven mad by her out-of-control charge. The stories are linked not only by characters but by themes which are explored and developed across them, from loneliness and depression, to violence, love and tenderness. It’s a rich and masterful collection that is honestly, simply astonishing.

Metafictional, melancholic and dryly witty short stories from Chile’s voice of a generation. Alejandro Zambra is a detail-focused, exacting and profound prose writer, and, in our mind, essential. No disrespect to the Fitzcarraldo Editions impeccable design, but in this case it masks how playful, silly and utterly humble these stories are. To reconfigure expectations a bit: “My Documents” refers to the folder on a desktop computer, maybe even the place where a story goes when it’s forgotten about.

There are a lot of Shirley fans knocking around and all power to them, but the books they love are often her novels. And brilliant though her novels are, Shirley Jackson is at her finest and darkest in her stories. These tales are short, satisfying and spooky as hell.

You know Richard Matheson’s work even if you haven’t read any. Some of the most iconic and disturbing Twilight Zone episodes were adapted from Mathesons stories such as “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Button, Button” and dozens of his back catalogue were adapted to TV and film. Reading these stories has an air of deja vu, but always comes hand-in-hand with an unexpected and disturbing twist.

Transfixing and macabre stories from the underbelly of modern Argentina, where ghosts still roam the abandoned houses and creeping menace stalks the streets. You’ll never forget reading a Mariana Enriquez story. All her collections are simply incomparable, but this is a great place to start.

In many ways, this couldn’t be further from Carmen Maria Machado’s hit memoir, In the Dream House – but then again, it is just as astoundingly good, as startlingly thoughtful and explosive as its predecessor. In these vivid short stories, heads roll, plagues ravage the earth, and medically induced weight loss has unexpectedly creepy results. For fans of Mariana Enriquez, Angela Carter, the Brothers Grimm and anyone interested in how to craft a perfect short story.

An enchanting and experimental collection. Each of these stories is set in a liminal space – on the edge of a community, on the cusp between life and death, on the border between this world and the next… Quite where or when each is set, who is speaking, or what exactly is going on, remains enticingly ambiguous throughout. Fittingly, Onuemezi’s style is entirely inventive; in between dazzling and elegant prose, we are faced with stark blank gaps. Again, uncertainty reigns! Narrator and reader are united in a state of mystery, trying to puzzle out a disorienting and often dystopian world.

A collection of genre-defying Korean short stories that jump between the ridiculous and the terrifying. Dive in to find Angela Carter-style fables, body horror, ghost stories and science-fiction. High on the list of Storysmith favourites from the last few years.