Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig

December 16, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Tess Lewis. Peirene Press, 2011. Originally published 2006. 110 pgs. Library copy.  The publisher of Peirene Press, Meike Ziervogel, compared Hotschnig to Franz Kafka in her short introduction to this short story collection, writing that “here we have a Kafkaesque sense of alienation – not to mention narrative experiments galore!”. Having never read Kafka, I cannot comment on the similarity between Hotschnig and Kafka. What I can comment on is the […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Peirene Press, Short Stories, Translated • Tags: Alois Hotschnig, Tess Lewis

Minnie’s Room by Mollie Panter-Downes

March 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2002. 125 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes”, this collection of ten short stories presents the realities and dreams of the British people following the end of the World War II. Each story was originally published for the American publication The New Yorker between the years 1947 and 1965, a follow-up of sorts to her short stories from 1938 to 1944. Those wartime stories were published by Persephone Books in 1999 as Good Evening, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Mollie Panter-Downes

The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind by David Guterson

August 5, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Vintage, 1996. Originally published 1989. 176 pgs. Purchased. Guterson’s collection of short stories are largely set in the Pacific Northwest and are focused on the transition from childhood to adulthood and the relationship between man and nature. There are another six stories in the collection for a total of ten, but the four recounted below are the ones that stood out to me as I was reading the collection and the ones that continue to remain with me […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, Short Stories, United States • Tags: David Guterson

Breach by Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes

June 24, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Peirene Press, 2016. 160 pgs. Purchased. The English Channel may separate the two countries, but the city of Calais has become a border town between France and Great Britain. Migrants and refugees hoping to settle in Britain have flocked to the French side of the Chunnel, building a community known as “The Jungle”. The eight short stories included in this collection by Popoola and Holmes are largely set in “The Jungle” and feature the voices of refugees […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, France, Peirene Press, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Annie Holmes, Olumide Popoola

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

February 19, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Matilda Novak. HighBridge, 2005. Originally published 1999. 6 hours, 15 minutes. Library copy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, Lahiri’s collection of nine short stories address the conflict between one’s identity as an Indian and the America in which the individual now lives. This common theme connects all nine of the stories irregardless of the exact identity of the central character (male or female, Indian or Indian-American or white American) or the location (Boston, […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Fiction, India, New England, North America, ReadDiverse, Short Stories, United States • Tags: Jhumpa Lahiri, Matilda Novak

Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano

April 8, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale University Press, 2014. 213 pgs. Library copy. Like many who read solely in English, the announcement that Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature left me a bit confounded. I have never heard of the author and never, to my recollection, seen a review for his work on one of the many book blogs I religiously read. Journalists and bloggers alike blamed the lack of awareness for his […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, French, Genocide, Holocaust, Nobel Prize, Short Stories, Translated • Tags: Patrick Modiano

American Innovations by Rivka Galchen

October 10, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 175 pgs. Library copy. Galchen’s collection includes ten short stories and nearly all of them are written in first-person making it difficult to determine how distinct these stories are supposed to be from one another. Even so, I found myself warming to nearly every rendition of ‘I’ and greatly enjoying the magical realism injected into many of the stories. The book begins with “The Lost Order” in which the narrator is harassed […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Fiction, Giller Prize, New York, North America, Short Stories, United States • Tags: Rivka Galchen

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

April 9, 2010 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Vintage, 1977. Print. 243 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Named the best nonfiction book of 1976 by the National Book Critics Circle and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1978, Kingston’s “memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts” tells of the Chinese myths, family stories, and events of her childhood as Chinese-American girl living in California that have shaped her identity. The five short stories don’t always connect to another; in fact, “At the Western Palace” and “A Song […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2010 Reads, AP Literature, Asia, China, Nonfiction, Short Stories, Textbook • Tags: Maxine Hong Kingston

The Cage Keeper and Other Stories by Andre Dubus III

December 22, 2009 by Christina

Fiction — print. Vintage, 2001. 206 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. A collection of short stories by the author of House of Sand and Fog, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories delve into the actions, thoughts, and motives of criminals, ex-cons, and those who work in the criminal justice system, and into the lives of those who fall between in the cracks of society. In the title story, a halfway house worker is kidnapped by one of the inmates, Elroy, and […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Fiction, North America, Short Stories, United States • Tags: Andre Dubus III