So… I may have said ‘monthly recs are out, Seasonal recs are IN’ in the last edition, but October turned out to be a good reading month. And as we approach the end of the year, it will be getting increasingly hectic for me, so here I am whilst I have the time and energy! Surprise!
Also, I was tidying up my archive list the other week, and turns out I have read over a hundred online short stories so far this year!! Obviously quality > quantity any day but it’s still very nice to have a quantitative benchmark for the goal I set myself in January which was a vague intention to ‘read more online short stories this year’ and I think I have succeeded at that! Okay okay, I won’t get ahead of myself and start an end of year review right now, it’s only NOVEMBER, so let’s get to the recs from October ~
Here’s the list if you just want to read without any preconceptions/my rambling!
Choke - Suyi Davies Okungbowa
At the Clinic - Sally Rooney
The Thief of Memory - Sunyi Dean
We Ate the Children Last - Yann Martel
The Story of An Hour - Kate Chopin
Bone Soup - Eugenia Triantafyllou
Warm Beds (Camas calientes) - Mónica Bustos translated by Analía Villagra
Choke - Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Giving into being overpredictable and trite, and saying that this had such a choking oppressive and sinister atmosphere. As the story says: Choke. Stifle. Smother. Suffocate. Strangle. Drown. You get the idea.
There is a reason it has 97 favourites, the most a fictional piece has had on there in a LONG while (perhaps ever?!), and that reason is that it’s an excellent piece of horror.
This is the second work I’ve read by them - the first being the equally excellent The Haunting of 13 Olúwo Street which I may talk about more if I ever make a haunted horror edition but for now, it’s on Fireside Fiction if anyone wants to read it! - and I hope to read more horror by them in the future, they’re very talented at it.
At the Clinic - Sally Rooney
A short story about Marianne and Connell, the main characters of Sally Rooney’s very popular novel Normal People. Without giving the game away too much, it could be considered as an epilogue to the events of the novel. However, it was written prior to it.
In a similar writing/publishing trajectory, I remember recommending The Fruit of My Woman by Han Kang in a previous set of recs earlier this year which was the basis/inspiration for their later book The Vegetarian, but which I hadn’t read. So because I HAVE read Normal People, I could finally make the comparisons I wanted to! comparison! It really was a valuable insight into how a short story evolves into a novel and how those mediums differ/their strengths etc.
What I found particularly striking was obviously yes a short story = smaller word count so this almost forced Sally Rooney to sharpen certain aspects and perceptions of their relationship to portray the key points of their dynamic. Condensing their relationship into specific memories, almost as the key foundational stones as it were… And I’m sure through the writing process of the novel, changes were inevitable, but in this short story, the less favourable aspects of their relationships were so much more razor clear.
I think the style of Sally Rooney’s prose is a better fit for short stories for my taste, because she is very adept at character studies and minutiae, and the short story is easier to frame with these in mind! And it is also much more forgiving to the pacing, which was one of the gripes I had with Normal People. (Well. With a lot of the ‘contemporary lit’ genre as a whole, that’s on me.)
Also less time with these characters so they don’t annoy me for too long… Sally Rooney writes them so well, they succeed at that it way too easily!
The Thief of Memory - Sunyi Dean
Hi everyone I love circular narratives and revenge. And tragedy. And monsters. And unreliable protagonists who just don’t know. Gets me every time.
We Ate the Children Last - Yann Martel
I don’t know what I expected from the guy who wrote The Life of Pi but somehow it wasn’t the rot & filth that was the focus of this? A disturbing little tale! Much to chew on. (Perhaps not the best phrase to use in the context of this story, oops)
The Story of An Hour - Kate Chopin
Another very short one definitely worth the 5 minutes it takes to read. I won’t give a summary because I think the dramatic irony of it all is worth experiencing blind.
Bone Soup - Eugenia Triantafyllou
I will be honest, I am not entirely sure I understand what will happen next but part of the fun of not having your hand held to reaching conclusions is that you get to concoct various theories (of varying possibility… and varying degrees of Horror)!
Warm Beds (Camas calientes) - Mónica Bustos, translation by Analía Villagra
Gosh… (imagine me sighing wistfully here. so you understand the tone) the prose of the translation is so beautiful that I can only dream wistfully of how it originally reads, why don’t I speak every language ever!!! The imagery also is gorgeous.. I am envisioning this as one of those short grainy indie films that starts mundane and slowly descends into a lonely unsettling sense of melancholy. Who is going to carry out my vision!
That’s all from me! Finally! I seemed to have been in a very verbose mood at the start and then abruptly ran out of steam (verbosity? is that a word?) so note: 1) these are all recs taken directly in order from my reading log so listed in chronological reading order, I didn’t make any changes 2) less things to say doesn’t equal liking it less! I do find that articulating why I liked something can be much harder than reasons I disliked a work, and this is a habit I will definitely forever be working on… There is simply a natural hater in me, it seems.
Anyway! As always, do let me know if you read any of these and your thoughts! Happy reading :-)
Y.