Going Against the Buzz
Story (Collection) Time
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about which books get more or less “buzz” and reflecting on my own tiny role in the literary attention economy as I choose what to cover here. Some of my choices are inevitably swayed by my own responses to the prevailing buzz, as I seek out books I’m personally excited about because I’ve seen them on a list somewhere online (e.g., Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!) as well as some I feel I should read, at least in part, because of their accompanying critical acclaim (e.g., Percival Everett’s James). There is a push and pull for me since I want to cover books I’m hopeful you’ll be interested in—which might be ones you’ve already heard something about—as well as share some you might not encounter elsewhere.
Story collections in particular have a reputation for being under-read and under-reviewed, and I’ve developed an informal rule limiting myself to just one story collection per post, under the assumption that more readers gravitate toward novels. I’m now questioning the self-fulfilling loop of this logic. Am I, a short story writer myself, perpetuating that trend by recommending fewer story collections? If I really enjoy story collections (which I often do), why not cover more than one at a time?
I personally find story collections to be best-suited to the busier seasons of life, when reading might be relegated to shorter chunks of time. When the gaps between reading sessions are long enough, I much more easily lose momentum with a novel, while a collection lends itself to being set aside for a day (or four) between stories. Even when I have the time to read multiple stories in a single sitting, I rarely read more than one because I enjoy letting a given story percolate in my mind for a while before returning to read more. I also love the inherent variety and thrill that comes with starting each new story. Even if I don’t respond as deeply to one, there’s a decent possibility that the next will surprise me.
This may be my most counter-intuitive argument in favor of story collections, but I feel much freer to set aside a collection if it’s not landing with me after a few stories, while (fair or not) setting a novel aside unfinished feels like a black mark on my soul. As a result, I spend a lot less time finishing story collections I don’t like than finishing novels I don’t like, and it leads me to be more adventurous as a reader.
If you already consider yourself a lover of story collections, this post will be right up your alley, and if not, I hope you’ll give one of the following a try and see if you might become a convert to the form!
That said, if you are hankering for a novel recommendation and are disappointed to find this post focused on short stories, feel free to mosey on over to The Rumpus and check out my new review of Melanie Cheng’s novel, The Burrow, which came out in the U.S. from Tin House Books on November 12th. :)
Now, onto the story collection extravaganza!
A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo
This is a thoroughly enjoyable debut by another fantastic writer from Lagos, Nigeria. It will especially appeal to those of you who love a great realist collection with stories that lean more toward the 20-25 page mark. This is usually NOT my wheelhouse—I hear this kind of description and feel like there’s a 50-50 chance I’m going to get really bored, fast—so the fact that this was one of my favorite collections of the year is all the more remarkable.
Okonkwo has a gift for finding and leaning into pressure-cooker levels of tension and intensity within entirely mundane domestic contexts. Unlike Lesley Nneka Arimah’s collection, which I covered in September, or ‘Pemi Aguda’s debut, which I reviewed at The Hopkins Review in October, there is no whiff of the speculative or experimental here. These are just straightforward, masterfully constructed stories about family relations and friendships, often centering on children and adolescents. Okonkwo’s light-footed prose and character-building are strong as well, often complimenting each other. I just opened a page at random to find a quote and quickly landed on this one, from page 45, that demonstrates this easy grace: “Aunty Agnes, after several attempts at starting a conversation, had given up and sat chewing her food like she held it responsible for the silence.”
Stand-out stories included: “Nwunye Belgium,” “Animals,” “The Girl Who Lied,” and “Burning.”
This is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara
“He had taken the dog, too. They left behind them a great and holy void. It resembled the alarming emptiness that cathedrals and mosques hold for those of us who believe in nothing beyond what is proven to exist.”
Kimberly King Parsons, my workshop instructor at the 2024 Tin House Autumn Workshop, brought a copy of this book to our workshop book exchange, a Tin House tradition wherein everyone brings a favorite book to share and goes home with a book someone else brought. While I didn’t end up with This is Salvaged in the swap, Kim’s verbal pitch for the book led me to seek it out once I got back home.
These stories inhabit a form of realism that leans into the more off-kilter dimensions of reality, especially the new realities Vara’s protagonists must navigate after their worlds have shifted in some seismic way—say, because of the death of a teenage sibling, a career-and marriage-ending scandal, a parent’s remarriage, a daughter’s desire to meet her birth father, etc. The title, This is Salvaged, suggests a focus on what is saved in the wake of disaster, though its reinterpretation within the context of the title story is delightfully ironic. Several stories also lean into the weirdness of the corporeal, particularly the relationships between our bodies and that which they shed or expel. One story begins with a woman’s quest to figure out where exactly in her house she vomited the previous night before her sister arrives with her family; another involves a child who hides a ball of skin she is collecting as a result of a skin condition.
Though many of the topics are heavy, the collection is fundamentally playful and often subverted my expectations. The opening epigraph is telling of Vara’s style and approach: she quotes the end of Lorrie Moore’s short story “Real Estate,” which is primarily 280 (if I counted correctly) consecutive utterances of the word “Ha!” In retrospect, Moore’s early short fiction makes a lot of sense as a touchstone—funny, crisply written, prone to the stylistic invention and the occasional sharp left turn.
Stand-out stories included: “The Irates,” “I, Buffalo,” “The Eighteen Girls,” and “What Next.”
No Windmills in Basra by Diaa Jubaili, translated by Chip Rossetti
“While the doctor was trying to make light of the reaction everyone had to his obvious gaffe, Wasam bent over the map to mark the spot where Iraq was with his lips. His kiss made a sound much like the sound of someone putting his lips around his mother’s nipple for the first time.”
This final recommendation is a collection of magical realist flash fiction by Diaa Jubaili, a southern Iraqi writer who is the author of three story collections and eight novels. This was actually the book I brought home from the Tin House swap, a gift from my workshop-mate, Fernanda Coutinho Teixeira. (You can find Fernanda’s fantastic short fiction online at The Deadlands, Strange Horizons, and The Ex-Puritan.)
I was a bit hesitant at the idea of an entire collection of flash fiction, thinking it would be hard to sustain reading momentum if nearly of all the stories were only a page or two long, but I had the opposite experience. I read on compulsively, in the spirit of, “Oh, just one more…okay, maybe just one more,” not unlike the way I might plow through the better part of a bag of chips. This, I realize, is quite the opposite of the “savoring one story a sitting” experience I described above, but I did appreciate how easily the book still permitted me to pick it up or put it down—though my inclination was primarily former, even more so on evenings when I was tired, or felt my focus was limited. These little stories snapped me back awake.
As an American with an extremely limited understanding of Iraqi culture, I was also very interested to read a book that portrays life in Iraq in which the trauma and havoc wreaked by war and the American occupation was a part of the story, but not the primary focal point, and from the perspective of an Iraqi writer. Previously, the only other Iraqi fiction I’d read was The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq by Hassan Blasim, which is an amazing collection but is very much centered on the violence of war. Jubaili’s short fictions are organized into loose topical sections, beginning, yes, with “WARS,” but moving on to include: “LOVE,” “MOTHERS,” “WOMEN,” “CHILDREN,” “POETS,” and “MISCELLANEOUS.”
Here and there, a story didn’t quite land for me, but the majority were compelling, transporting me to a world in which the lines between the realistic and the fantastic were blurred to a mix of comedic and tragic effects. Several were absolutely gutting and poignant. If you are a fan of magical realist stories in the vein of Gabriel García Márquez and are open to the more staccato and indirect rhythms of flash, this is a collection you might really enjoy.
Some stand-outs include: “The Taste of Death,” “The Dung Beetle,” “The Scent of Her Palm,” “Qamarhun,” “The Night Girl,” “A Woman’s Heart,” and “The English Cemetery.”
Anyone have a great story collection to recommend? Feelings about whether you’d like to see more story collections covered in these posts? I welcome your recommendations and/or thoughts in the comments below if you feel inclined to share!
Great recommendations Jules 😍