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I picked this up because I wanted to read Lucie McKnight Hardy’s story, ‘Badgerface’, and I did like that story a lot; it’s believable and unnerving, a queasily accurate portrait of small-town working-class family drama and tragedy. But it was Sam Thompson’s ‘The Heights of Sleep’ that really grabbed my attention. Immediately riveting, masterfully constructed, with a quietly and inexplicably terrifying ending, this is pretty much a perfect short story. It made me ache to read the works of J.S. G...
Utterly agree with Robert below. Such a well-crafted collection. Adult. Eclectic. All brilliantly written. Lucy McKnight's 'Badgerface' is wonderful.
I think this is the third edition of Best British Short Stories I’ve tried, and the last. It must be that editor Nicholas Royle and me like different things. Who am I to argue with his literary accomplishments? I couldn’t finish a single story in this collection without an effort of will, with the possible exception of Melissa Wan’s ‘The Husband and Wife go to the Seaside’. I hope it’s not the best Britain has to offer. As with the American Pushcart, this is another series that needs new competi...
The short story is an odd thing. Due to the brevity, one cannot go into a lot of detail, yet a well crafted short story can have a punch that will stay with you. Thus, technically speaking publishing an anthology with the word ‘best’ in it, should contain a ton of punchy stories.Spoiler it does.The 20 short pieces in this collection are excellent. There’s a great range as well. Ranging from the weird (Paul McQuade’s A Gift of Tongues, Sally Jubb’s The Arrangement) , some ‘slice of life’ stories
Liked this bunch of punchy stories, always felt like reading the next one (I read randomly), they had an easy readability, how they move you quickly into their worlds. But they're not alike in other ways, a wide range of subject and style. A lot of laptops accidentally turning themselves on and phones going off. Old fashioned horror (A Gift of Tongues; Beyond Dead), and stories of the isolated going slowly 'mad' - depersonalised, obsessive, breaking down (Smack; Cluster), one or two set in the f...
I finally managed to read Best British Short Stories 2019 due to the fine late September weather. I’m glad I did, Nicholas Royle did another great job to point us to interesting short story writers published in 2019. He even seemed to have found some sort of a theme: dealing with disappointments or misadventures. Quite a feat for an anthology. Actually, reading this volume made me appreciate even more what a special form a short story collection can be when the stories are interlinked and share
Some stories I liked some I did not some I didn't understand and others were just weird without being clever. I still think Murakami writes the best short stories. Seems Britain 2019 as a long way to go .
Who doesn’t like an anthology?I have a penchant for themed anthologies mostly, as I sometimes find anthologies which collate a load of stories together seem a little disjointed, choking the flow to other stories, jarring and hampering my enjoyment (ever so slightly may I add). But what we have here in the Best British Short Stories 2019 by Salt is something that unifies these many randomly chosen stories; that unifying element is a sense of greatness, of storytellers conjuring breathtaking stori...
I'm on a run of great books at the moment.Best British Short Stories 2019 is an excellent collection of imaginative short stories, shining a light on the darker side of everyday life. The stories which stand out as my favourites are 'Smack' by Julia Armfield, and 'Reality' by John Lanchester. While there were obviously some stories I enjoyed more than others (my least favourites being slightly too cryptic), there were none I didn't enjoy. I liked that there was only really one story written in a...
A frightening, even shocking story. One that stands out as a violator of its own literary soul. Well, I genuinely found it so. Possibly because I live in such a bungalow as the one in this story, the bungalow whose curtilage is violated. The story has nailed the nature of such bungalows, many of which surround my bungalow, and the nature of the people in them. Yeti with zimmers. I came here relatively early, but I am becoming like those described denizens, as is the wife. And I bet you anything
As with the 2018 edition, again I came across some short stories that seem to somehow stick. I am slowly becoming a great admirer of the genre. Nicola Royle does a good job making these selections! He mentioned in the preface the 2020 edition will be the last one with him as the editor. I secretly hope he’ll change his mind.
One of the most consistently good editions of this always interesting collection, now apparently in its penultimate year. If you want a recently rediscovered little gem of hideousness from the long-departed Ann Quin, a mash-up of 'Huis Clos' and 'Year of the Sex Olympics' and quite a few other very good, often excellent contemporary stories, try this.
This is the 9th edition of the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle - no not that Nicholas Royle, but this Nicholas Royle, and indeed the other Nicholas Royle built a highly-inventive novel around the confusion: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - and published by the wonderful Salt Publishing.The collection comes with an interesting introduction from Royle, which gives a great overview of the wider short story scene in the UK in 2018. Indeed so wide is
