Subtle and astounding short stories: GOOD AND EVIL AND OTHER STORIES by Samanta Schweblin, THRILLED TO DEATH by Lynne Tillman, LONG DISTANCE by Aysegül Savas
By EITHNE FARRY
Published: | Updated:
Good and Evil and Other Stories is available now from the Mail Bookshop
THE six tales, elegantly translated, put the eerie into the everyday. Argentinian author Schweblin delves into the rawest emotions – grief, guilt, depression – and adds a sheen of strangeness to situations that are already traumatic.
Here, the spirit of a dead cat unsettles two rational writers at a retreat (William In The Window), an act of generosity leads to a devilish home invasion (A Visit From The Chief), and a failed suicide attempt demands an inexplicable sacrifice (Welcome To The Club).
While in the outstanding An Eye In The Throat, a father’s moment of inattention results in an injury to his young son’s voice. Haunted by selfreproach, he begins receiving silent, ghostly phone calls ...
Thrilled to Death is available now
DELIGHTING in w o r d p l a y a n d weirdness, the 39 stories from a career spanning four decades are peopled by characters waylaid by doubt, anxiety, melancholy and a mordant preoccupation with death.
There’s the list of Hollywood stars that the narrator of More Sex would consider sleeping with, a family saga, complete with murderous relatives, stockbrokers and anthropologists (Aka Mergatroyde), and the intervention of the author in a tale of chance encounters, who’s unsure about the outcome, but confident about her work: ‘I know there will be stories. Certainly, there will always be stories’ (Come And Go).
Long Distance is available now from the Mail Bookshop
ROME, Marseille, Istanbul, Paris and small-town Russia are the backdrops for these tender stories.
Highlights include the title story and a long-distance romance that proves tricky when the lovers are reunited, the couples’ personalities sparking in the wrong kind of ways in the City Of Lights and The Room, where a home tutor, seeking a quiet refuge, is disturbed by a secret that her landlord unwittingly reveals, while in We Are Here, a disaffected student fails to fit in with her lonely host.
Elsewhere, friendships are tested, a fiance finds his betrothed family alienating and a woman realises her unsatisfactory dates follow a pattern.
Daily Mail
