A few of my favorite reads…
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Fiction ※ Poetry ※ Nonfiction ※ Drama
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All tagged short stories
Claire Keegan’s collection of seven short stories, Walk The Blue Fields (2007), is everything fans of her Small Things Like These, Foster, and Antarctica will expect. Her prose is somehow both sparse and lyrical. Her characters are dynamic despite scant description. In the course of few pages, Keegan’s stories unravel and leave the reader breathless and teary-eyed. Each story creates a momentary snapshot of Ireland, one of millions of snapshots a curious observer might find on any given day.
Madeline Miller’s short work, Galatea (originally published 2013), is a satisfyingly tiny book. Bound in hardcover with petite dimensions (roughly 4” x 6”), this little book is only 56 pages (including a six-page afterword). The story itself, like Miller’s novel-length Circe (previously reviewed—the first on LitReaderNotes— here) and The Song of Achilles (previously reviewed here), is a feminist retelling of classical myth. Miller fleshes out Galatea’s story from the story of Pygmalion in Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
Michiko Aoyama’s slender novel, What You Are Looking for is in the Library (2020, English translation 2023) connects a series of vignettes about largely disconnected individuals living in contemporary Tokyo. The central hub of the many spoked story is the community library with its large librarian who seems like a character who has stepped out of a Miyazaki film like My Neighbor Totoro.
