Nicholas Royle (2) (1963–)

‘’Some books come to feel as if they belong to you alone. And then you find yourself face to face with the person who made them, and what are you supposed to do?’’

Another beautiful stop to the exciting universe of the British Short Story.

These are my favourite stories in another fascinating collection edited by Nicholas Royle:

The Husband and the Wife Go to the Seaside (Melissa Wan): A married couple needs a change. But from what and to what end? This is for the reader to show more decide…

Cuts (Stephen Sharp): An almost surreal nightmare that makes much more sense than it seems, terrifying in its reality. Seven pages of scattered facts and stream-of-consciousness and pure literary brilliance.

The Heights of Sleep (Sam Thompson): A moving account of the unique ‘bond’ between readers and their favourite writers.

Nude and Seascape (Ann Quin): I am sure most readers would react quite dramatically when faced with this story's utter cruelty and perversion. I loved it.
And I don’t know what this shows about me…

On the Way to Church (Vicky Grut): A couple arrives in the husband’s hometown for the christening of their son. A tender story about the secrets that lurk within a household and the impact of unexpected news.

‘’The man two doors down pursues a secret hobby in the dead of night. This is one of your first discoveries.’’

Cluster (Naomi Booth): A sleep-deprived mother witnesses the shady actions that take place in the hours before dawn, hidden in the dark alleys of Leeds.

Smack (Julia Armfield): A jellyfish becomes a telling metaphor for a marriage that has fallen apart and a woman that has decided to chase shadows in her loneliness.

Badgerface (Lucie McKnight Hardy): The moving, haunting story of a return and a wound that can’t be healed.

‘’She remembers her mother showing her how to make paper dolls, but they always ended up separate instead of joining together.’’

Optics (Ren Watson): In a wonderfully eerie and cryptic story, a young mother thinks that her daughter is slowly fading away. Is it a matter of optics? Is it her wild imagination? Or is there something sinister at play?

A Gift of Tongues (Paul McQuade): A woman has to put up with the strange gift of her German boyfriend. She has accepted a new tongue as a loving present. Literally. He doesn’t want to communicate in English so she HAS TO change. But things don’t go as they’ve planned and her identity is destroyed. A story with hundreds of metaphors and underlying themes for discussion.

New Dawn Fades (Sophie Mackintosh): A haunting story about our compulsive need to summon the most terrible ghosts once the night has fallen…

‘’You are being haunted by yourself, you think half-seriously, considering the mystery of the screen. You are your own worst ghost.’’ show less

‘’If only you could hit your head on rocks below shimmering
surfaces of water and not be fazed by the impact or your blood
momentarily blinding fish.
If only you were how I imagined you to be.
What do I do with the disappointment of this? With the gap in between?
What do I store there for cold, isolating winters you will
not be a part of?’’

These are my favourite stories in this brilliant collection celebrating British Literature.

Beyond Criticism (Luke Brown): A melancholic story about show more desire, hypocrisy, appropriation, motherhood and relationships. A woman has to face the cruelty and rotten facade of her former partner and the fact that she may still harbour feelings for him. I loved the writing, the almost whimsical urban atmosphere and I loved Claire. The confused, wounded and proud Claire.

‘’When the goddess Kiru emerges from the shoreline on the small Island of St Simeran, the third hands in her stomach lining contracts, steering her towards the sounds of the eunuchs surrounding a large fire in the beach, shrouded in an orange glow from the flames.’’

Nudibranch (Irenosen Okojie): A marvellous, dark tale of a goddess who shape-shifts and a eunuch. A story steeped in Caribbean culture and island legends, a beautiful metaphor for womanhood, power and sexuality.

The Phone Call (David Constantine): A phone call brings old secrets to the muddy surface of a married couple’s life, opens past wounds and exposes the fragility of a long-term relationship.

Vashti (Zakia Uddin): In a strangely beautiful story, a dance teacher forms a controversial relationship with the father of one of her students and finds herself in the middle of a rather dysfunctional family.

Energy Thieves, Five Dialogues (Richard Lawrence Bennett): Five utterly absurd but entertaining dialogues on energy, youth, empathy, beauty and the certainty of death.

Halloween (Nicola Freeman): A woman tries to come to terms with her husband’s illness as the festivities of Halloween are in full swing in her neighbourhood.

‘’A vine-shaded street unfurled down to a dark still stream, a stone slab, a bridge to cross over into a courtyard overlooked by the terraces of houses. A dog braked down at her from behind an iron railing.’’

In the Mountains (Amanthi Harris): A haunting, sad story of a woman travelling to Spain and a deep ache that has to be healed. Beautiful and eerie, lyrical and sensual, it reminded me of Tennessee William’s writing.

The Further Dark (Jeff Noon & Bridget Penney): An uncanny, unsettling story about a man who receives a blank email from an unknown sender… It is exactly this absurd threat that takes over his life and the feeling of dread that gradually becomes alarmingly tense that will give you goosebumps…

Weaning (Helen Mort): An extremely powerful story about motherhood and depression that will leave you shocked and in awe…

Purity (Robert Stone): An almost dreamy, whimsical tale about the bond between humans and animals and the fragile relationships between us all…

‘’Edward and Marcia had got into the habit of walking along the cliff-top at dusk. What, here on Auskerry, Edward was tempted to call the gloaming. The sultry day was much cooler now and, indeed, would soon be cold. At this latitude the summer sky was still pale, but the first stars could already be made out.’’ show less

I can't really explain except to say that night is my enemy. It's dark and terrible. Night whispers death. Every creature shrinks from it because the dark wants us and we sense it will bite to kill. It will kill if it can. And somewhere this tiny voice I hear is reassuring me. It repeats that night is only a means to morning, and the morning will take away all my terrors and give me fresh hope, if I can get to Walsingham.''

One of the best instalments in the series.

Highlights include:

The show more Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant (Leone Ross): A woman ''haunts'' a restaurant in order to be close to her one true love. Extremely moving and haunting.

The Politics of Minor Resistance (Jessie Greengrass): Working in a job that practically requires you to become a robot, a woman narrates her daily routine in a voice that cries in despair.

Walsingham (Trevor Fevin): Such a mysterious, eerie story...A woman who has experienced abuse is making a pilgrimage to find peace. However, the omens she encounters foretell anything but. A masterpiece that hovers between Gothic terror and Folk horror.

Mrs. Świȩtokrzyskie's Castle (Colette Sensier): A middle-aged woman becomes obsessed with an online RPG game. She falls (in dubious ways) for a man she has never seen and her actions result in strange repercussions for her children. Just how far can loneliness impact the weak-minded?

A Leg to Stand On (Neil Campbell): An academic feud goes horribly awry...

''We came back as ghosts from the war, haunting the places we once called home, but they had changed utterly, or rather it was that trench foot, trench mouth, the dawn burst of star shells, had changed us. The things we'd seen meant that we could no longer step upon the same blithe pavements, could no longer hold the dry, decisive hands of older girls on summer evenings, could no longer look with the same eyes on the wainscoting and gambling, the ivy, the chimney-topped roofs of our homes. Now we live between London's boarding houses and cafes, her pubs and her parks, striding with collars up through the endless, pitiless rain.''

Wyndham Le Strange Buys the School (Alex Preston): Four veterans of WWI (who might or might not be ghosts...) return to their familiar grounds only to find that the world has changed beyond recognition. An ode to Checkhov and a lament to life.

Song of the River (John Saul): Two young women move in a place near the Thames and we witness their almost whimsical conversations about strange dreams and music.

1961 (Greg Thorpe): A story of identity and stardom, using the icon that was Judy Garland, set in New York.

The Staring Man (David Gaffney): A woman who makes models is visited by a mysterious old man, prompting her to create the figure of a staring man. She can't know that she has found herself a part in a tragic story. A beautiful dance between the supernatural and the real horrors in our lives.

''From the window at the sink I see blackbirds tapping the soil, early-morning spring thrushes, sheep at the fence. I notice the state of the clouds across the valley. Sounds I've made fill the room - the suck of water as it drains from the sink, mugs on their hooks chiming against each other, the end of conversation.''

My Husband Wants to Talk to Me Again (Kate Hendry): The disintegration of a marriage depicted through an absolute lack of communication.

The Only Thing Is Certain Is (Thomas McMullan): A true masterpiece! A man faces the death of his child and the cruel task of a cremation gone wrong in a city that seems to have succumbed to a strange regime. Is it a hallucination or a coping mechanism?

''That was what Scottish Islands were, after all: heather and bracken, tumbledown crofts and Highland cows, solitary eagles, hovering over rugged grandeur. And water: streams to waterfalls, crashing waves - a lot of water.''

Distance (Janice Galloway): A mysterious woman, who is clearly facing psychological issues, is almost disappointed when she finds out that her illness is actually curable. A story with a protagonist whose motives are unclear and a highly troubling mother-child relationship.

It is December now. Frost patterns the windows, shimmers on the roofs, making icicles of the towers. The weeds that smashed through the cellar door, that vined their way in through windows and shutters have died, leaving their yellow-brown corpses underfoot. The bats control the towers; further down the moths rustle and birds shriek and creak and cackle. Foxes scarper through the corridors, their swift brushes sweeping trails in the dust. There is an owl in the dormitory sitting watch over me as I sleep. Through the broken windows of the library, snow has blown, and banks up against the armchairs, the mildweed ottoman.'' show less

One of the weakest volumes in the series, filled with stories that felt focused on being gross and shocking, And NOT in a pleasantly literary way. Stories like Sink Rate by David Frankel should come with a tiger warning and I am a sworn enemy to trigger warnings. However, some of us do travel a lot, others have experienced traumatic events related to flights. Why any editor would think this story should be included in the collection is beyond me. Others like RZ Baschir’s The Chicken and show more Will Wiles’s The Meat Stream were horrible, unreadable. If these writers have won ‘awards’ for their writing, I pity us all contemporary readers.

When you only enjoy 10 out of 20 stories, the omens are not in your favour, right? On the bright side, these 10 stories are easily among the best I’ve ever read, born out of bold ideas and exceptional writing.

How You Find Yourself (Sara Sherwood): A life narrated in relationships with acute remarks on womanhood and intimacy.

Single Sit (Edward Hogan): The lightning relationship between an employer and an employee, set in the quietly haunting English landscape.

Offcomers (Rosanna Hildyard): In a situation that mirrors the time of the pandemic, a couple (not a father and a daughter as an idiot below would have you believe…) tries to cope with the risks of farming. Except the husband is an absolute brute. Set in the rugged land of Yorkshire.

‘’A window a table a recess with a lamp.
A window a table.
A moon looking in.’’

Square/Recess/Moon (Ben Pester): A brilliant, evocative metaphor for the loneliness and frustrations of modern life. Extraordinarily beautiful writing.

Sarcophagus (Alice M): A woman narrates her thoughts while being in an MRI scan machine.

The Comet (Sonya Moor): A make-up artist narrates her meeting with Simone Veil, the French politician who survived the unimaginable horror of Auschwitz and went on to pass the legalization of abortion in 1975. Moving, poignant, the absolute gem in the collection.

A Visit to the Bonesetter (Christopher Burns): This story scared the living daylights out of me. In a dystopian society, a married couple gets a taste of the authority’s desire to eradicate what makes us humans.

An Easement (Paul Mcquade): A new life awaits the lovers of our story, yet new beginnings are seldom pleasant. An atmospheric story set in the rural landscape of the USA.

New To It All (Sean Padraic Birnie): A body horror tale done right. Exquisitely disconcerting.

Wild City (Sophie Mackintosh): A designer returns to a city that has decided to make the transition from urban to rural in a dystopian setting that looks eerily familiar. show less