The Best Short Stories and Collections of 2010: Part Two
Just in case you didn't get your dose of short fiction magic on Wednesday, I now present part two of 2010's best short stories and collections. The stories are different (although Wayne Macauley rates a second mention) and so are the experts...aside from that, the same magic pervades throughout. More to read, more to savour.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who submitted their "best-of's". Australia's literary scene is busy at the best of times, let alone leading up to Christmas, but each expert provided their thoughts and reflections at record speed and with noted enthusiasm. Merry Christmas to you all!
Let's continue.
Jo Case - Editor, Readings Monthly, Associate Editor, Kill Your Darlings
This was a terrific year for short-story collections, with some excellent US single-author collections being locally published, Affirm Press’s Long Story Shorts series seeing the introduction of a series of Australian authors with strong debut collections, and a swag of high-quality anthologies. So, it was hard to pick favourites.
My favourite story was Sherman Alexie’s "War Dances", first published inThe New Yorker last year and part of the collection that bears its name, which was shortlisted for the US National Book Award, won the PEN Faulkner Award, and was recently released locally by Scribe. His stories – particularly this one – combine black humour, intriguing characters, deep poignancy, and stark observations about race and class in America, from a middle-class Native American point of view.
"War Dances" begins with musing on cockroaches, moves on to the narrator’s mysterious loss of hearing, which threatens to point to something far worse, and then to reflections on visiting his alcoholic, diabetic dying father in hospital after his foot has been amputated. It’s highly inventive in form, broken into segments that vary from straight storytelling to a caustic "Exit Interview for My Father", to an interview with a family member about their history of fighting and dying in wars, from World War II to Iraq. But it never feels like it’s trying to be clever or original – it simply is, and it’s compelling reading that entertains and makes you think, while taking you on an emotional rollercoaster. One of the best short stories I’ve ever read.
My favourite collection was Maile Meloy’s "Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It". I’ve been a big fan of Maile Meloy since her page-turning literary soap opera about a Californian Catholic family, "Liars and Saints". So, I was very excited to encounter this short-story collection, which takes her back to the beginning of her career (her debut was the collection "Half in Love"). These stories are a silky delight to read – terrific dialogue and characters, quiet, character-based suspense, barbed humour, emotional range, a palpable sense of place, and the impressive evocation of whole, utterly convincing, worlds within each story. The scenarios range from a masterful verbal dance between a mistress and her lover’s seemingly unaware wife, where we’re never quite sure who knows what; to a dying small town and an orphan in love with his best friend’s girl, with surprising and wrenching consequences. Highly recommended for both short-story aficionados and lovers of good writing and storytelling.
Ryan O'Neill- Author, A Famine in Newcastle. Third prize winner, The 2009 Age Short Story Award
My favourite story for 2010 was "_iH_ttocS" by Warwick Sprawson, which appeared in Etchings 8. I've been reading a lot of experimental stories recently, and have discovered that there are some writers who use a fractured structure, or dispense with punctuation, or play about with typography in an attempt to conceal a weak story, or weak writing. Warwick Sprawson isn't one of these writers. His story is a hilarious and very clever commentary on the competitiveness inherent in writing (even if most writers don't admit this) and a dissection of the pettiness of creative writing classes. Even the author bio is part of the plot and used to great effect. For me, the mark of a great short story is one that makes me envious, leaving me thinking, "I wish I had thought of that." And that's how I felt after reading this story.
My favourite collection of 2010 (ish). I know this collection, "Legend of a Suicide" by David Vann, was published a bit earlier than 2010, but I have to choose it, as it is one of the best collections I've ever read. It's a series of linked stories which does something very unusual, even unique, and the annoying part is, i can't tell you what this thing is or it would ruin the best part of the book. Suffice to say Vann explores the real life suicide of his father in a way that is miraculously not depressing, but sometimes funny, and always moving. Vann's writing is always very good, especially in the novella-length longest story in the book, but it is what he does with the structure that makes the collection unforgettable. And if you want to find out what that is, you're going to have to read it yourself.
Lisa Dempster - Director, Emerging Writers Festival
My favourite story for 2010 was "Friction", by Virginia Peters, as featured in Issue Two of Kill Your Darlings. This story jumped out at me, a love story from the start. I liked the unfolding of the relationships in the story, not to slow but not given away too early. But it was the small things that captivated me, the truths about how people in intimate relationships work, and the descriptions of body bits zinged me everytime - the fat and long breast, the cactus juice spunk, a mushroom of blackish brown hair. And I loved that it was set up in such an unusual way, with the fiction/non-fiction vignettes. One to treasure!
My favourite collection for 2010 was "Emerging Arab Voices", edited by Peter Clark. As the director of the Emerging Writers' Festival attending a book fair in UAE, this title caught my eye! It's a bilingual reader of mostly-short stories (and novel extracts) by Arab writers. It's a captivating mix of writing, traversing social realism to allegory to politics to family drama, and all set in the Arabic world (Darfur, Tunisia, Saudia Arabia, Egypt) which for this Aussie reader made it an exotic, heady mix!
There's also an interesting premise behind the book, as everyone included in the book are contemporary emergings from across the Arab world who were invited to an intensive creative writing workshop, Iowa-style, and the stories flowed out of that. It's a gorgeous book to boot. My favourite find this year.
A. S. Patric - Editor, Verity La; Judge, 2010 Essence of St. Kilda Word Prize
My favourite story for 2010: "Sir Fleeting," by Lauren Groff. I read it in a recent issue of 'One Story' but it is also published in her new collection "Delicate Edible Birds."
Nostalgia for other worlds, other lives, other loves, when it's done well, is a glorious experience of being alive in a world surrounded by richness, diversity and passion. That kind of nostalgia is ridiculously difficult to negotiate however (all of us have such jaded hearts that the very word 'nostalgia' is uttered as anathema) and it's also the reason why 'Sir Fleeting' is such a remarkable story for me.
My favourite short story collection for 2010: "Demons in the Spring," by Joe Meno. Joe Meno is a genius creator; which is not to say he's a genius writer. Often his stories, like "Ghost Plane", offer up an impeccable story that for me, compares well to Chekhov's "Lady with a Little Dog," but he's often brilliant and interesting even when he fails, like in stories like "Stockholm 1973." It's that restless searching for brighter, better, braver, that I admire so much in this bold collection of stories.
Bronwyn Mehan - Author and Poet, Third Prize Winner for the 2009 Age Short Story Award
My favourite short story for 2010 is "Super Black" by Juanella McKenzie from South Australia, published in See My World, Writings by Young Indigenous Australians. The story takes place over a weekend as 18 year old Jeanne, the narrator, her sister, Vera and friends go out on the town, hang at home working on their hair and beauty routines, attend a footy carnival and get wasted at a party. It’s written in the fast-paced, smart-mouthed style typical of the chicklit genre. ‘He was the one from the bar who was interested in Vena. But she was soooo not mutual about the situation.’ What makes this story stand out is the inventive way McKenzie weaves aspects of Indigenous culture, especially the belief in mystical powers, into the narrative. Jeanne’s powers come via the medium of the hand-me-down bra she wears - in particular the inserts, aka ‘chicken fillets’ - and she uses them to fend off sexual harassment and to intervene when a footy player attempts to use his powers to rig the outcome of a game. The writing is raw and a bit wild. Great fun.
My favourite collection of stories for 2010 appears in Meanjin, vol 69, no. 3. Two of the stories deal with migration and death. In Jennifer Mills’Prospect, a young man finds a child’s body as he sifts through the belongings abandoned by Mexican ‘wetbacks’ attempting the treacherous journey into the US. And in Catherine Cole’s Home, a bereft Iraqui refugee spends his time in Rookwood cemetery waiting for his daughter and grandchildren to join him. In Simone Lazaroo’s Someone Else’s Bali, a terminally ill mother breaks grim news to her seven year old daughter, in Natalie Sprite’s Small, an pregnant woman faces up to the challenges of bringing a child into a less than perfect world and in Belinda Rule’s The Secret of the Dark Elves, a 19 year old uni student deals with the fallout of her first sexual relationship. These five quality stories, from writers who hail from the Big Smoke, WA and NT, are emblematic of the range of Meanjin fiction that departing editor, Sophie Cunningham has delivered to us throughout her tenure. Cheers, Sophie.
Josephine Rowe - Author, How a Moth becomes a Boat
My favourite short story of this year is "A Lovely and Terrible Thing" by Chris Womersley, which is a beautifully wrought gothic piece about a guilt-stricken father and his encounter with a stranger's family secret. Chris read this story at Dog's Tales - the weekly storytelling event I co-run with Chris Flynn - and it had the entire audience anthralled. "A Lovely and Terrible Thing" is not yet available in print, but if you happen to see the title in a contents page over the coming months, I'd recommend snapping up a copy of whichever journal is lucky enough to include it.
I've been on an Australian literature bender this year, and I'd put Wayne Macauley's "Other Stories" at the top of the pile for short fiction. This is Macauley's first collection of shorts, and its contents have been distilled from almost two decades' worth of stories. Favourites include "This Bus Is Not A Tram" and "Simpson And His Donkey Go Looking For The Inland Sea", and as you may be able to discern from those two titles, the motifs and settings throughout the collection as a whole are unflinchingly Australian. Just about everything that I'd like to say about "Other Stories" has already been said more eloquently by Emmett Stinson on his blog Known Unknowns. Read his review here.
