Often filled with beautiful language and thought-provoking questions, short stories can be as profound, moving, and resonant as a novel. And you can check off a tricky category of our reading challenge! Here are a few of the team’s favourites:
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
I devoured these stories in a day. They're lyrical, surreal, and otherworldly with themes explorating transformation, the body, and change.
- Darby
Florida by Lauren Groff
Groff’s writing is stunningly beautiful, and she explores a range of human emotions and experiences. The collection as a whole is atmospheric, mesmerising, and deeply moving.
- Darby
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
A sci-fi short story collection by a classic American author? Yes, please! Welcome to the Monkey House is full of stories that ask “What If?” questions. Like his novels, there’s a bit of dystopian and otherworldliness, as well as thought-provoking exploration of humanity and human truths.
- Darby
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
You Think It, I’ll Say It is a collection of 10 short stories about the everyday conversations we have and their inevitable misunderstandings. Smart, funny, sharp - everything Sittenfeld’s novels are and more.
- Denise
Help Yourself by Curtis Sittenfeld
In Help Yourself’s three short stories Sittenfeld upends our assumptions about class and race, envy and disappointment, gender and celebrity. Brilliant.
- Denise
Turbulence by David Szalay
David Szalay is one of my favourite writers. Each story in this collection is named after the codes assigned to airports on a flight's route, in sequential order (so eg, LGW-MAD, MAD-HKG). The disparate characters crop up, sometimes as bit parts, in each others' stories in a very satisfying way. It's a gentle, beautifully told narrative of modern life.
- Tom
