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Short Story Appreciation Discussion - September 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-21 19:27:41
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2026-06
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Dear Book Club Readers ---

Your comments on great works of literature always make for such wonderful reading. And it would be lovely 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 and prove to be a delight in and of themselves. 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:.

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!

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Comments

Greg

All of these were haunting, but The Smallest Woman in the World sent chills down my spine. It has that special quality of using unremarkable, nearly banal prose to say something profound and indicting. I nearly missed it. I am going to have to read more Clarice Lispector.

Patrick All-de Lange

I love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's work. I had already read this short story of her in her collection of the same name. I liked rereading it, which helped capture the overall theme throughout these 3 stories. My whole life in the Netherlands is very privileged, from the health care to the social security blanket to my job, to my entire background, and stories like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's show me how great the divide is between me and people in a lot of other societies. But it also paints a bleak picture of how little has changed for black women since slavery times in terms of safety and just normal living. The fetishist she ends up with is painfully recognisable.

Joe Beaulieu

The smallest woman is one of my favorites of this series. I have a friend who writes micro fiction. His style is the surprise ending and given the length that’s about all it can be. While a well executed twist ending can be fun if that’s all there is then it doesn’t do a lot for me. I kind of lump Desiree’s Baby in this category. I do give it some points however for the double twist.

Miri Kim

Wow, that TED talk of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was incredible! I am glad that we here are very diverse, so less prone to the danger of a single story. And I loved the many layers of The Smallest Woman in the World!

Daryl

I’ve found myself totally engrossed in The Death of Ivan Ilyich this month. I have a large Tolstoy book with many of his works outside of his two major tales. Wonderful book.

Bobbe Nunes

The experience of this community brings incredible hope for the curious and engaged reader and listener no matter what level of previous engagement. As with all things it encourages learning as part of the real magic of being alive.

Spider in your cider

“The thing around your neck” was such an impactful story. I loved how she used the second person. This created such a visceral reality. We don’t take the point of view of the protagonist, we become our protagonist. “You” becomes such an effective way of Emphasizing the otherness of the Nigerian protagonist in America. Her/your observations of the Americans who try to appropriate or categorize her/your )Africaness. The protagonist’s candid Observations about Americans are stinging. Ultimately, our protagonist is unable to truly penetrate the otherNess of her white lover. “The thing around your neck” becomes the cultural identity that can’t be completely shed. The gulf between 2 people which can only be crossed briefly and incompletely before that natal sense of self and the cultural assumptions about the world return. The thing around your neck becomes the stubborn hold of homesickness.

Librarian Barbie

I just read all three this morning. WOW! I have wanted to dig into this form more deeply and this was a great way to start. I loved the way that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie used second person in her story. The Smallest Woman in the World was an interesting view of people's thoughts on race. Desiree's Baby was a surprise. I haven't read Chopin since college, but now want to go and read The Awakening. I love being challenged to read things I would not think of on my own.

debra

I found all three stories this month to be compelling and timely. Each provided visceral gut-wrenching moments sparking connections with politics here in the US election, memories of attempted sexual exploitation either by family members or employers, the feeling of being yoked to your past whatever it was, and even the difficulty sometimes of navigating racial boundaries in a supportive way. All that in a space of about 15 pages. Another great selection of thought-provoking stories this month.

Tanya
>>150543011

I very much enjoy revisiting The Death of Ivan Ilyich. There’s much to unpack, not least of all the topic of morality & theme of what life means both for the individual, but as a society as well.

Tanya

Because of a university assignment, my short story focus has been on Mansfield’s, ‘The Garden Party’. While I don’t truly love it, I can appreciate the wider themes of loss of innocence, societal class disparities, and the mortality of mankind as both beautiful and tragic.