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Court In The West Eighties by Carson McCullers Analysis
Have you ever lived in close quarters with strangers? Perhaps you went out of your way not to know these people, but in the name of etiquette rather than aloofness. There’s something discomfiting about living in a stranger’s pocket. Like commuters on a packed train, we avoid each other’s gaze. Failure to know our neighbours […]
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A Country Where You Once Lived by Robin Black Analysis
“A Country Where You Once Lived” by Robin Black (2010) is a great example of a short story in which the present story plays out alongside the backstory of a stand-out inflection point (“fulcrum”) which happened 13 years earlier. Two separate time periods merge into one. Whenever this happens in a story we are reminded […]
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Pine a Short Story by Robin Black Analysis
“Pine” is a short story from a collection called If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This published 2010, written by Robin Black. This is a wonderful example of a contemporary story loosely based on an old fairytale—this time it’s Bluebeard. “Pine” is also an excellent example of a story which centres a homophone […]
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If I Loved You by Robin Black Short Story Analysis
“If I Loved You” is a short story from a collection called If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (2010), written by American author Robin Black. A woman dying of cancer writes an imaginary letter to her new neighbour, who has uncharitably built a fence along their boundary line. This fence prevents her […]
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Deep Holes by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Deep Holes” is a short story by Alice Munro. You can find it in the June 30 2008 edition of The New Yorker. I’m very much reminded of Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer and the real life of Christopher McCandless. But “Deep Holes” is not the story of the son — it’s the story […]
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Free Radicals by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
My reading of “Free Radicals” by Alice Munro (2008) is highly metaphorical. To me, this is a story about the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, and the new vulnerability older women feel when their male partner dies before them. Read literally, though, and this is the story of one woman’s brush with a serial murdering intruder […]
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Fiction by Alice Munro, Nuanced Infidelity Short Story Analysis
“Fiction” is a short story by Alice Munro (2009). From the title itself we might expect it to be metafictional. Sure enough, there are constant reminders to consider the role of fiction in our lives. I will tell you everything, and if I don’t tell you it means I don’t trust you or I have […]
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Pet Milk by Stuart Dybek Short Story Analysis
“Pet Milk” by Stuart Dybek first appeared in the August 1984 edition of the New Yorker. Jane Alison writes about “Pet Milk” in her chapter on spirals, in her book Meander, Spiral, Explode. “Pet Milk” is an example of a spiral structure. The structure of this story is part of its symbol web. The first half […]
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Back For Christmas by John Collier Analysis
As soon as I read “Back For Christmas” by John Collier (1939) I thought of Roald Dahl. Sure enough, I google both names in a single search and learn that, for Dahl, among many other male writers, Collier is listed as a heavy influence. Credit where credit is due, though: Roald Dahl’s two most famous […]
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Passion by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Passion” is a short story by Alice Munro, published 2004 in The New Yorker. This story has much in common with “What Is Remembered“. An elderly woman looks back to when she was young, in a vulnerable psychological state. In both, the younger woman gets into a car with a ravishing bad-boy doctor, contrasting against […]
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Cumulative Plots and The Fifth Story by Clarice Lispector
“The Fifth Story” (1964) is a work of microfiction by Ukraine-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977). I tend to analyse short stories by looking at their dramatic arc, but what of a story like this? Surely “The Fifth Story” does not fit traditional ideas of what makes a complete narrative. I also love when I read a […]
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The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte Analysis
If you like playing Red Dead Redemption, if you enjoyed The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I recommend “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, a short story by Bret Harte, published in the late 1800s as the century was coming to a close.
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The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce Analysis
Hard to remember now, but ‘damned’ used to be a full on swear word. A teacher at high school once pounced on me for using it (though by the 1990s I think she was being ridiculous). ‘Damned’ was certainly shocking 100 years earlier than that, in 1893, when Ambrose Bierce published his horror short story […]
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What Is Remembered by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“What Is Remembered” by Alice Munro appears in the print edition of the February 19, 2001, issue of The New Yorker. It was also published in the collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Looking back as an old lady, this short story focuses on several days across one young woman’s life in which she hooks up […]
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Tobermory Short Story by Saki Analysis
“Tobermory” is a short story by Hector Hugh Munro, otherwise known as Saki. Anyone with a pet has probably wondered what that pet would say to you if it could talk. Many children’s stories have this premise, and this particular wish fulfilment fantasy. We imagine if our pets could talk they would say satisfying things. […]