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#16: Walking into the Wind by John O'Farrell
This book was a pleasant surprise in a week ground down by emotionally heavy but fulfilling short story collections...
#15: Fiesta, 1980 by Junot Diaz
Junot Diaz is probably best known for his first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but Drown, released in 1996, is well worth a look. In tales that explore the barrios of the Dominican Republic and the rougher parts of New Jersey, Diaz creates a paradoxical world where ugliness and beauty lie awkwardly together, where characters are the walking semi conscious, half drunk from the kick of drugs, alcohol, and unreliable relationships...
#14: I Can Speak! by George Saunders
Zadie Smith was riding on the success of her debut novel White Teeth in 2001. By strange circumstance, she met Italian publishers Marco Cassini and Martina Testa during a literary festival in Mantova. Cassini and Testa ran a publishing house from home and one of the manuscripts they were working on was a collection of US fiction writers exploring what it meant to be an American citizen. David Foster Wallace once described it as “a stomach level sadness... a kind of lostness (sic).” Smith took this original collection and pitched it to Penguin, with her own words as a new introduction. By 2003, The Burned Children of America was released, including Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, Myla Goldberg, and David Foster Wallace, all of whom were either already on their way or went on to major literary success...
#13: True Short Story by Ali Smith
Given that we here at the Gum Wall are all about celebrating the short story, it is only fitting that Ali Smith's True Short Story is the next inclusion on the site. While this book is uniformly strong throughout (The Child is a fine example of Alice Munro's adage that every short story is at least two stories, and No Exit is impressively creepy given it has fire-exits as its main topic),..
#12: Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan ~ Guest Post by Vicki Thornton
Singing My Sister Down, the first story in the collection, is about a young boy watching his sister being executed, by tar pit, for the murder of her husband. This is the basic premise, but in truth there is so much more to the story. We are drawn along as Ikky’s young brother and her family walk out onto the tar with her. They feast, play music, talk to her as the tar slowly draws her down. Surrounded by friends and onlookers, as well as those who wish to see justice delivered, Ikky’s family sing...
#11: The List of All Answers by Peter Goldsworthy
Thanks to school curriculums, many an Australian teen will be introduced to Goldsworthy at an early age: his debut novel Maestro is a common high-school text, and has been for a fair while now. What's sad about this is that in reading and rereading Maestro, they may never get around to reading his short fiction...
#10: Memories of a Friend by Lisa Fitzpatrick
Lisa Fitzpatrick is local writer from Byron Bay, who, according to her bio, also teaches yoga. If she’s as good a yoga teacher as she is a writer, then I’m on the next bus to Byron Bay to get busily working on my down-dog...
#9 Dance in America by Lorrie Moore
I first read this story in a writing class in 2004. What struck me was the combination of humour and compassion within, an intricacy of emotion beneath what seems like a simple story...
#7: Endgame by Louise Swinn
Lou Swinn is a publisher, review and small-press advocate. She wears a hat far better than most and is also one of the nicest people I know...
#6: Big Sky Paradise by Anna Krien
Ok, this is isn't actually short fiction. But after reading it again (and again) last night, I did not see necessary prescribed classifcations on what does and doesn't constitute narrative form; I saw my own restrictions, hemming in experience by nature of a preferred structure. Because make no mistake, Blue Sky Paradise is a story, a seeing, breathing roadtrip, both in and out of oblivion...and it is so full of imagery that it makes some stories seem positively blind by comparison...
#5: What Thou and I Did, Till We Loved by Cate Kennedy
This is one hell of a story. For those who haven't read Cate Kennedy, she is an Australian poet, author, and short story writer. She has just written her first novel, The World Beneath, which Jo Case described as "a thought-provoking journey into contemporary Australia". Cate Kennedy is also the only person I know of that has won The Age Short Story Competition twice (!), and in reading What Thou and I Did, Till We Loved, it's not hard to see how she pulled it off...
#4: Your Man by Etgar Keret
"When Abigail told me she wanted us to break up, I was in shock. The cab had just pulled up at her place, and she got out on the sidewalk side, and said she didn't want me to come up, and that she didn't really want to talk about it either, and that most of all she never wanted to hear from me again, not even a Happy New Year or a birthday card. And then she slammed the cab door so hard that the driver cursed her through the window."...