7/28/2017 The 10 best short story collections | Culture | The Guardian

The 10 best short story collections

Elizabeth Day chooses the sharpest and smartest of small but perfectly formed works of ction

Elizabeth Day co-founded Pin Drop, which presents authors and actors reading short stories in inspiring
locations;

Elizabeth Day
Friday 17 October 2014 12.00BST

Photograph: Neil Bennett

This Isnt the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
Jon McGregor (2012)

The best short stories should haunt you for days and weeks. The stories in McGregors collection
have stayed with me for months on end. They are linked by a unity of place the fenlands of
Norfolk and Cambridge and by precise, elegant prose that elevates everyday occurrences into
small, perfectly rendered pieces of art. As Maggie OFarrell put it in her Guardian review: The
stories wrap themselves around the wholly disconcerting premise that catastrophes can rear up
in anyones life without warning.

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Photograph: Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Raymond Carver (1976)

Possibly the most economical short story writer in this list, Carver, with his precise, punchy
prose, conveys in a few words what many novelists take several pages to elucidate. In stories such
as Fat and Are You a Doctor? he writes with at understatement about suburban
disenchantment in mid-century America. The collection shortlisted for the National Book prize
was written during what Carver called his rst life, when he almost died of alcoholism. His
second life started in 1977, when he gave up drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Photograph: Tim Knox

Tenth of December
George Saunders (2013)

Winner of last years inaugural Folio prize for ction, Saunders is, according to Entertainment
Weekly, the master of joy bombs: little explosions of grin-stimulating genius that he buries
throughout his deeply thoughtful, endlessly entertaining ights of imagination. Stories such as
Victory Lap demonstrate his deftness of touch in mixing humour and humanity, as well as
showcasing his technical brilliance, incorporating several dierent points of view in a contained
space. And Sticks, little over a page in length, is one of the most moving stories Ive ever read.
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Photograph: Rex

The Thing Around Your Neck

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

Adichie had written two novels set in her native Nigeria before this collection. It shifts her gaze to
the US in 12 stories that explore the experiences of husbands and wives, parents and children,
immigrants and permanent residents. The title story delves into the loneliness suered by a
Nigerian girl who moves to an America far removed from her imaginings. A wise and emotive
writer, in this collection Adichie touches on her familiar themes of exile, cultural
miscommunications and the human desire to reconcile internal and external worlds.

Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex

Runaway
Alice Munro (2004)

The Canadian writer won the Nobel prize for literature in 2013 for her extraordinary work as
master of the contemporary short story. She also won the 2009 Man Booker International prize
for her lifetime body of work and has been called a modern-day Chekhov. Runaway is among her
best collections and displays all of Munros mastery: the eortless shifts in time, sometimes
across decades; the ability to convey an entire life in a few pages; the exploration of complex
truths in uncomplicated language.

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Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

The Garden Party and Other Stories

Katherine Manseld (1922)

This collection was rst published in 1922, a year before Manselds death at the age of 34 from
tuberculosis. A pioneering modernist writer, Manseld was born and brought up in colonial New
Zealand before moving to Britain, where she became friends with DH Lawrence and Virginia
Woolf. The title story, one of her best-known works, is written in the modernist style, with the
deceptively simple setting of a family preparing for a garden party. Against this backdrop
Manseld brilliantly interweaves meditations on class, life and death, illusion and reality.

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Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex Features

Pulse
Julian Barnes (2011)

Barnes is best known as a novelist and won the Man Booker prize in 2011 for The Sense of an
Ending. As a result, his short stories are rather overlooked and shouldnt be. Pulse is Barness 17th
book and is a masterclass in the shorter form. He is brilliant at evoking social nuance and has an
unfailing eye for the tiniest detail that will shine light on the whole. Two particularly wonderful
examples from this collection are Complicity, about the delicate beginnings of a love aair, and
East Wind, about a relationship between an estate agent and a foreign waitress.

Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Observer

The Collected Stories

Lorrie Moore (2008)

This deliciously fat collection gives the reader the chance to dip in and out of one of the best
observers of human behaviour. Moore is notable for her arch tone and her sharp humour. But
what makes her special is the way she can shift so smoothly to gut-wrenching poignancy. She
writes about terminal illness, family dynamics and indelity with equal uency. A particular
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favourite from this volume is How to Be an Other Woman from her rst published collection,
Self-Help (1985), which was composed almost entirely of stories from her masters thesis.

Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)

This debut collection of nine stories won the Pulitzer prize shortly after it was published in 1999
and was named the New Yorkers debut of the year. The stories, written with what Michiko
Kakutani of the New York Times described as uncommon elegance and poise, deal with the
diversity of Indian-American immigrant experience and the curious alchemy of love and
relationships. My particular favourite in this collection is A Temporary Matter, a beautiful
mediation on grief, love and loss as a couple try to come to terms with the stillbirth of their child.

That Glimpse of Truth

David Miller (ed) (out 23 October 2014)
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Some of the best short stories contain unexpected moments of felicity on which the plot pivots.
And so it was that, just as I was compiling this list, I received a giant package containing this
doorstep of a book. It might be the most comprehensive collection of short stories ever,
featuring an all-star cast including Angela Carter, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl and more, selected
by David Miller, a literary agent and author.

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Topics
Short stories
The 10 best ...
Fiction
Julian Barnes
Raymond Carver
George Saunders
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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