Short stories Recent Picks

September 2009

The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Between the assassinations, by Aravind Adiga.(2009)
All the stories in this collection are set on India's south-western coast, between Goa and Calicut, in a small, nondescript every town called Kittur and tells of the overlapping lives of the residents. An illiterate Muslim boy working at the train station finds himself tempted by an Islamic terrorist; a bookseller is arrested for selling a copy of "The Satanic Verses"; a rich, spoiled, half-caste student decides to explode a bomb in school; a sexologist has to find a cure for a young boy who may have AIDS. This is the moral biography of an Indian town and a group portrait of ordinary Indians in a time of extraordinary transformation, over the seven-year period between the assassinations of Prime Minister Gandhi and her son Rajiv. (Amazon)

Love and obstacles : stories, by Aleksandar Hemon. (2009)
Set in the darkest heart of Africa, in the backwaters of Slovenia, in the melting pot of Chicago, this brilliant collection of stories is coloured throughout by the 1992 Bosnian war. All but one story features Bogdan, first met as a surly teenager during his diplomat father's assignment in Zaire, where he's happily corrupted by a degenerate American espionage agent. In each successive story, Bogdan recalls the surreal and salient experiences of his life: his youth with his ironically depicted family; his early determination to be a poet, his accidental sojourn in America, where he was caught after the commencement of hostilities in Bosnia; and his return to a 'cesspool of insignificant, drizzly suffering', where he has a transformative night interviewing a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. (Amazon)

What becomes, by A.L. Kennedy. (2009)
These twelve stories are profound, intimate observations of men and women whose lives ache with possibility, each story a dramatisation of the instant in a life that exposes it all: love and the lack of love, hope and the lack of hope. These men and women are perfectly ordinary people, whose marriages founder; who sit on their own in a cinema watching a film with no soundtrack; who risk sex in a hotel with an anonymous stranger. They conceal tenderness and disappointment, vulnerability and longing, grief and wonders. (Amazon)

Noise : fiction inspired by Sonic Youth, edited by Peter Wild ; introduction by Lee Ranaldo. (2009)
For more than twenty-five years, the anti-melodic “noise” of Sonic Youth has assaulted us, exhilarated us, inspired us. Their sound is caustic, elemental, nihilistic and quite unlike any other cult band. In this collection, twenty-one great literary voices offer short fiction based on or inspired by songs from Sonic Youth, a raucous coupling of music and literature. (Amazon)

My father's tears : and other stories, by John Updike. (2009)
A beautiful, moving collection of short stories, in many of which John Updike revisits the haunts of his childhood from the vantage point of old age. In all of these memorable stories, Updike strikes to the heart, giving words to what is so often left unsaid. He is at once witty, devastatingly observant, touching, and, of course, a consummate storyteller. (Amazon)

Let's call the whole thing off : love quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer, selected by Kasia Boddy, Ali Smith, Sarah Wood. (2009)
Love stories don't always involve hearts and flowers and walks in the park. This sparkling collection of the worlds greatest love quarrels, from Chekhov to Colette, from D. H. Lawrence to Jhumpa Lahiri, features love stories for every mood and occasion. (Amazon)

Mean streets, by Jim Butcher ... [et al]. (c2009)
The best paranormal private investigators have been brought together in one volume. The cases don't come any harder than these. Jim Butcher delivers a hard-boiled tale in which Harry Dresden's latest case may be his last. Nightside dweller John Taylor is hired by a woman to find something she lost, her memory. Kat Richardson's Greywalker finds herself in too deep when a simple job goes bad, and detective Remy Chandler has been hired to find out who killed the immortal being we know as Noah. (Amazon)

Why she loves him : stories, by Wendy James. (2009)
A collection of twenty short stories and one sequence. These are tales of fugitive lives: dazzling portraits of women and men on the run; from their present, their past, their future, and from themselves. Reflecting seemingly ordinary lives, with recurring themes of love, betrayal, passion and guilt to show just how vulnerable and intricate the human heart really is. (Book cover)

The bath fugues, by Brian Castro. (2009)
This is a meditation on melancholy and art, in the form of three interwoven novella, centred respectively on an aging forger; a Portuguese poet, opium addict and art collector; and a doctor, who has built an art gallery in tropical Queensland. These characters are tied by more than their art, each facing questions of deception and discovery, counterfeiting and rewriting, transmission and identity and each stretching the bonds of trust and friendship. (Book cover)

Enclosures, by Bill Direen. (2008)
A blend of carefully-plotted stories in extraordinary settings, Enclosures combines the genre of autobiography with that of the fantastic. (Book cover)

Previous New Zealand novels picks
Previous translated fiction edition
Previous humour picks
Previous historical novels picks
Previous debut novels picks
Previous suspense/thrillers picks
Previous chick lit edition
Previous short story