Asylum 1928
ISBN: 0-9523522-9-X
A short story is short. Is that it? The heart of the matter? Even short can be relative, many of Kafka’s stories and some of his finest, are no more than a few paragraphs, one paragraph in some instances. Others, He by Katherine Anne Porter to give just one example, can be as long as a novella. To my mind, the essence of a good short story, the thing that makes it stand alone, complete, true to its own tale and the form itself, is – acuity. A great short story captures a moment, or a series of moments, it presents the broadest picture possible in the briefest time allowed. It is acute.
Nothing huge has to happen. Very little happens at all in Chekov’s rarest gems, or in Raymond Carver’s vignettes of smalltown America or for that matter in our own Frank O’Connor’s seemingly simple homilies. A man eats gooseberries with his brother and his life changes, a bereaved couple mourn the death of their young son over a loaf of freshly baked bread with their local baker, a boy takes his first sip of guinness in a pub with his father. In James Joyce’s The Dead, in what is arguably the finest end to any short story, a woman watches snow drift across a graveyard late at night and in that moment, we have her entire life, and the life she hasn’t lived and her profound sense of loss.
So, it can be any moment, happening to anyone, anywhere, but captured by the writer, briefly, perfectly, so that the moment endures and takes on a life of its own. A universal life.
There are many fine stories in this new Fish Anthology. Some small and intimate, no less for that, some reaching out through the personal for a wider, more universal perspective. What they share in common though, is one person, the writer, wishing to tell a story – grand, simple, complex or everyday – and by turn, wishing to engage you the reader. And to this end, they must employ skills, it’s not a letter and they don’t know you. There isn’t time for the meanderings of a novel, there isn’t time to give you background information on every character or location. There is only time to quickly slip into your mind and hopefully leave an impression there. To this end, the writer must pitch at an acute level and sustain that pitch through to the very end. Paradoxically, this can be achieved through moments of high drama or moments of absolute stillness. Either way, the object is to engage you, to bring you on a journey with them.
For the majority in this volume, it’s their first time out on such a journey. For the select few – check names well – it won’t be their last. – Kate O’Riordan
Contents
Asylum 1928 – Maureen E. O’Neill
Read this story in Short Stories to Read Online
Dregs – Sylvia G. Pearson
The Light of the World – Robert Marsden
Taking Flight – D. K. Reinders
Helping Hands – David N. Martin
Friday Afternoons – Alison Grove
Free House – Michael Clifford
Moving – Nicole Louise Reid
Zimbabwe Boy – Rory Kilalea
The Lying Down State of Sabir – Catherine Pippett
Eurydice – Cathy Whitfield
To Kill a Wish – Bill Allerton
As Red As – Matthew Weait
Beyond Repair – Valerie Dabbs
Macaroni – Keith Carlton
Victoria and her Kimono – M SHANmughalingam
In the Kingdom of Silence – Leo Bartholomew
The Play Boy of Dublin City – Jean Harrison
Fear of Blood – M. L. Hassell
