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Short Story Appreciation Discussion - April 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-19 20:36:52
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2026-06
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Dear Book Club Readers ---

Your comments in our last short story appreciation thread made for fascinating reading. So it would be wonderful to hear what short stories you are enjoying alongside your other reading this month.

Our short story appreciation thread is a place to mindfully check in and share what works of short fiction have resonated with us recently.

The best way to appreciate the magic of short stories is to dive into some great ones and start discussing your insights and impressions with others. So let us know:

What short stories are you appreciating at the moment?

Let us know anything that has resonated with you during your short story excursions:

  • Powerful subtext

  • Compelling themes

  • Resonant passages

  • Your favourite writers

  • Beautifully crafted lines

  • Complex character studies

  • Elements you want to examine

  • Stories you want to recommend

  • Reflections, musings, and insights

  • How the stories inform your wider reading

This is the place to put your short story appreciations and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Curated Short Stories:

I have also specially curated three stories for you to enjoy. This is, of course, completely optional. Don't feel like you need to read all three. I recommend sampling the opening lines, or the first few paragraphs, of each one and seeing which one pulls you in. Spend time with the story that most speaks to your heart and make a note of the author you resonates with you.

My aim is to offer you short masterworks that will inform your wider reading. I love these works, and believe that being attentive to the themes, characters, and style of writing will prove to be very rewarding.

The short stories I would like to recommend for you are:

  • 'A Married Man's Story' by Katherine Mansfield (story - audio)

  • 'A Simple Heart' by Gustave Flaubert (story - audio)

  • 'The Deceitful Marriage' by Miguel de Cervantes (story)

I would love to know what you make of the chosen stories. Which one did you focus on? Why did the style or theme resonate with you? If you read a different short story, let us know your thoughts on it. Or tell us about your favourite story.

All short stories can be found in the anthology That Glimpse of Truth, which makes an excellent collection for deepening your appreciation of the short story form.

Thank you so much for sharing your love of great literature with us.

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

Comments

Gonzalo Broto

I've been reading some of Herman Melville's stories in a collection of his short fiction, and it's been a hit-and-miss so far, but "Bartleby, the Scrivener" more than makes up for all the misses: what an extraordinary, subtle, melancholy and desperate tale of what the loss of hope can turn a human soul into! I was utterly devastated by the end. The whole story is poignant and beautifully written. Once I fully digest it, I will go back and read it again! As for the three stories recommended for this month, I read all of Cervantes' "Novelas ejemplares" years ago, but my memory of them is foggy, so I should reread them all again.

Estella

This past week I read Peasants by Anton Chekov. This was the first time I have read anything by him. I was fascinated by how he tells the story because he left tiny cliffhangers in the text. This made it a quick read for me because I needed to know what would happen next. This story had a lesson on pride vs humility (seemed to be more focused on religious pride). There are more short stories in this book by Chekov, and I am looking forward to reading them in the future. I am familiar with this author because of the narrative concept called "Chekov's Gun" which means that every element that is included in the story must have purpose and meaning, and, if something doesn't have a purpose and meaning, then it should not be in the text. This is something Anton himself believed, wrote about, and taught to people who were writing plays. So, with this in mind, I think that's why this reading was even more interesting - I was aware that everything he included in the story had purpose. Once I read the short stories listed above, I will comment on them. I am looking forward to reading them this week!

Estella
>>135860783

Bartleby, The Scrivener is one of my favorite short stories. Profound!

Viki Sigler

Although I am in the US, I was able to buy a copy of Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival from Abe Books. I am excited to read it!

Deborah Norwod

I love the Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, full of short stories each better than the one before. I was lucky enough to meet him at a book signing once and he spent time drawing pictures in the front of the books he signed for me…and having me guess what they were, I’d started reading him in my teens (I just turned 68), in fact, Fahrenheit 451 was one we read in high school English (so imagine my thrill at him drawing ‘flames in that one’). I think I’m going to reread that book now that I’ve brought it to mind again. I love all things Ray Bradbury.

Julie Nevin

I am shattered by 'A Married Man's Story' This story has engaged much of my thoughts this week. A particular sadness, I think known only to the married woman ( All the female characters in this story) seeps out of al the edges of the male story "You're not cold?" This bid for connection is heart breaking . Cold Kitchen, cold man, cold bed .....

Julie Nevin

I have just finished 'A Simple Heart', I loved it, thank-you, Benjamin for your recommendation.

Deborah Norwod
>>136160300

You should love anything Ray Bradbury writes…he had an amazingly creative mind. I’m in the US, too. He lived here in San Diego, like me. Actually, he lived in La Jolla, a more posh beach area…my mom lived there, too. It’s still San Diego, no matter what they call it….or Sandy Ego, as it’s often nicknamed. Anyway, let me know what you think of him, ok?

Deborah Norwod

I just read the second short story… A Simple Heart. I find myself thinking about the children’s book, The Giving Tree. All that poor woman wanted was to be loved…and in that pursuit, after a huge romantic disappointment, she became as giving as she could be to the people in her new immediate circle, even if they let her down. Her turn to religion was not unexpected, because the Catholic Church offers itself to help fill that empty space so many people have, that they say can only be filled with the love of God. She was so alone in her later years…I was devastated for her when her parrot died. I’m a big animal lover and grieve very hard when I lose them…just like a family member…and she’d already lost so many. So when it was rotting with maggots (not great taxidermy work) I was very glad she was blind and couldn’t see it. When the story ended, I just felt sad at the loss of her…she seemed such a gentle soul…never fully appreciated. Much like the giving tree…who kept giving til there just wasn’t anything left.

Deborah Norwod
>>136057269

I’ve always thought that’s what makes a great story…nothing written there that doesn’t have a purpose.

Denise Powers

I read Katherine Mansfield's A Married Man's Story and I really was blown away. I didn't realize until much later that the story is consided uninished (I should spend more time reading these comments!), but in the meantime, had tried to imagine all the things that could have happened between the man and his wife to make him so sad, so angry, so bitter: "it is not only I who recognizes that [she is gone]; the room changes, too. It relaxes, like an old actor." Had she had an affair? Been caught in a lie? What? And then I wondered if anything at all had happened, except that the baby had been born and she became a mother - no longer just his wife, but a mother. He had already set about his view on how married people were from witnessing the woman, beaten up and frantic, blow into his father's chemist shop: "So that's what it is outside," I thought. "That's what it is like out there." It is as if he expects then, that marriages are violent and painful. He is certain his father is his mother's murderer and privately calls him 'Deadly Poison'. He also says that his religion is that 'nothing happens suddenly'. I think that while he is engrossed in his fantasy life that takes him outside of his home, outside of his life, to adventure out into the rain, board ships on stormy seas, wander around the roads and farms, while he is otherwise engaged, his life passes him by. His escapism has taken him away. He knows his wife is lonely and wants him to be present. She asks him for this and he looks at her and rejects her. She asked him for reassurance on their wedding day and he resented her for her plainness and her vulnerability and he rejected her then in a most knowingly dismissive way. Ugh! My heart went out to her! What keeps a couple together? he asks. "how long shall we continue to live like this?" he fantasizes about asking his wife, but he won't ask her directly. He treasures these thoughts and how explosive it would be if he was say it out loud; how she might respond with passion. He prefers instead to punish her every minute of every day with the silent treatment - a psychological weapon of brutal magnitude. He is punishing her for being ugly, for needing assurance from him, for bringing this baby into the house from the street. Is it possible that this woman could have done anything right? I want to celebrate this woman if she did have an affair. His abuse is lethal and cruel - as visible as the bruises to the woman in the chemist's and as long and agonizing as a slow poisoning to the death. I find myself viscerally detesting the narrator. At the same time I marvel at how such an emotionally deranged person could notice so much beauty in the world. That is the voice of the author: I feel she is narrating through this psychotic character and the two 'voices' are at odds with each other. The language is absolutely beautiful and perhaps that is why on the first read, I felt sorry for this man. He had suffered such abuse and perhaps his wife was to blame for doing something. And then I read the story again and I can't get around the juxtaposition between the words of the narrator and how he speaks and the meanness of his spirit. Overall, I love this story and it captured my imagination for several days after I read it. Outstanding. Cruel and outstanding.

Julie Nevin
>>136920824

Yes, I felt the two voices, at odds with each other too ! Thank-you for all your analysis x

Julie Nevin
>>136661992

I think the story is a little easier to bare, if one thinks of the Simple heart, as the pure heart and that her love is beyond the Churchianity. The heart of the devotee, being more important than that which is the recipient of the devotion. There is a story somewhere, that speaks of a character reaching heaven by being devteed to a pig I like to think she reaches Grace. Possibly a Divine love in her innocence x

David Stephens

During April I read " The Story of a Non-Marrying Man" by Doris Lessing. It is the cover story of a short story collection written by Lessing in 1972 and published by Penguin in 1975. I have read six of the thirteen stories and they are all veritable gems!! That said, I sometimes wonder how my brain functions-I am able to read Lessing with ease and genuine enjoyment but struggle to enjoy or even understand the stories of Jorge Luis Borges. I am still trying to understand the point of " The Library of Babel". Given the praise heaped upon him by the critics, I am clearly missing out. Pity.

Patrick All-de Lange

I am so confused. I read all three stories out of "That Glimpse of Truth," which claims them to be part of the 100 finest short stories ever written (how ever biased and lopsided that might be, they should all be pretty good at least). And that is why I can't imagine that, from all the short stories Katherine Mansfield has written, an unfinished one would be the finest. That doesn't reflect well on the rest of her work! And then Cervantes, this "short story" is basically the introduction -- however funny the tale of the marriage is -- to the longer novel concerning the dogs and in this way abruptly ends. This is exactly what my problem with short stories is: unless they are really good, they are often unsatisfying. Short stories have little time to work on character building, so the tale itself has to do all the heavy lifting. So if it doesn't make me think or feel/wonder/thrill me/surprise me... it often is unsatisfactory. Aeasop however short and well-known, still made me think/reflect. Hameln same as Aesop, but is a quaint historic piece that interested me and because so many variations are out there interesting to read the source material (the real town of Hameln is very fun to visit). So now Cervantes: if the story had finished after the relating of the marriage I would have found it quite funny. Now it took me on a further journey towards to the 2 dogs and unceremoniously dumped me before that tale started. Now you can say, "but you can enjoy the tale of the dogs next!" No, I came here for a short story and this wasn't it, so then don't present it as such. Call it what it is: the opening chapter of a longer story. There were countless "short stories" that were actual short stories on their own, tucked within the pages of Don Quichot that would have been much better examples of a fine short story by Cervantes. Dutch writers often do the same with short stories, this is probably where my aversion comes from: they set up a story, make it interesting, you want to know where it is going, and at a critical moment, for instance, like Mansfield's, where you are supposed to find out what mystery/twist/point the story was working to, they end it and leave you to have your own thoughts about how it would or should probably end. I hate that. I'm not a storyteller. With the limited amount of material in a short story available my guess about what might happen will probably be the most basic solution. I don't mind open endings in novels because the writer had so much time to get me invested in the story that I'm prepared -- and want! -- to think about what might happen. (Also, abruptly ending a tale is not the same as an open ending, just want to make that clear.)