When you’ve had a long day but want a mental getaway before your head hits the pillow, consider turning to a collection of short stories for a quick dose of fiction.
First, two books of regular short stories:
Blank Pages and Other Stories Bernard MacLaverty (2021) MacLaverty now lives in Scotland, but he grew up in Northern Ireland, and his fictional characters live on both sides of the Irish Sea. As I’ve noted in my review of his novel Midwinter Break, he focuses on the intricacies of ordinary domestic life, among people of the middle class or lower middle class. Some of these stories are set in the present day, and some reach back into the 20th century. There are no wild rides here, but there are plenty of introspective observations, in spare and lovely prose.
You Think It, I’ll Say It Curtis Sittenfeld (2018) These ten stories reveal Sittenfeld’s wide-ranging understanding of women’s roles in romantic relationships, in parenting, in the workplace, and even in volunteer activities. As each story delves into a different set of characters, human foibles are certainly on display, but so is human compassion. I especially like that many of the stories are set in non-coastal places such as Houston, Kansas City, and St Louis, underscoring the ordinariness of the plots, even though some of the plots are pretty zany. Of course, zaniness is a characteristic of twenty-first-century life. (For a Sittenfeld novel, see my review of Rodham.)
Next, some short stories that are put together as a novel:
The Seamstress of Sardinia Bianca Pitzorno Translated from the Italian by Brigid Maher (2022) Although this book was published as a novel, it’s more a series of interlinked short stories about a young woman who lived at the beginning of the 20th century on an island off the coast of Italy. Pitzorno evokes Old World charm while detailing the extreme social and financial stratification that the unnamed seamstress faces as she hand-crafts clothing and household linens for her wealthy clients. The female supporting characters are mostly competent and feisty; the male characters are mostly corrupt and lecherous. The seamstress is advised by one woman, “Don’t ever let any man be disrespectful to you.” (138)
Finally, short stories that are sort of essays, too:
How It Went: Thirteen More Stories of the Port William Membership Wendell Berry (2022) This book is the 14th in a series of novels and short-story collections that celebrate rural life in the American South. In this collection, Berry further fills in the cast of characters from his fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, and environs. Central to the stories is Andy Catlett, who, like Berry himself, was born in 1932. The narratives cross the border to essay form, and often to threnody, as Berry laments the industrialization that has nearly obliterated the old agrarian ways. I had not read any of the previous Port William books, but I easily picked up the threads, and I treasured Berry’s majestic and evocative prose, which is also in evidence in his acclaimed nonfiction on environmental issues.