Mini Reviews of Short Story Collections: How Strange a Season & Sword Stone Table

Megan Mayhew Bergman is a short story writer whose previous two collections received great acclaim. I really enjoyed her 2015 collection Almost Famous Women, so I was intrigued to see what she would do in this book as she wrote about women who are learning to chase what they want and overcome tradition and history. While these aren't connected stories, I have the feeling that a discerning reader who read through the collection a second or third time would find a lot of threads to follow. 

In "Wife Days," Farrah negotiates with her husband for some days to just be her own person instead of following his whims, or those of her trainer or family. After Holland's girlfriend leaves for a research project, Lily decides to take on her own project with a conservation group in North Carolina and tries to come to terms with her mother leaving their family when she was young in "A Taste for Lionfish." Bergman's novella "Indigo Run" might be my favorite piece in the collection. Helena-Raye Glass finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and married as Skip Spangler considers selling her family home generations later. Each of these protagonists is wondering what it would mean and what it would feel like to put themselves first, to follow their own desires, and to leave the burden of care and the expectations of others behind them.

How Strange A Season
By Megan Mayhew Bergman
Scribner March 2022
320 pages
Read via Netgalley 

In the introduction to Sword Stone Table, editors Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington wrote about their search for Arthurian retellings. They wanted tales that bent the race or gender of the characters, or introduced queer characters to these beloved stories. So they set out to create their own, and asked sixteen writers to contribute their own takes on Arthur and the Stone Table. Writers from Sarah MacLean to Alexander Chee said yes, and Sword Stone Table came to life.

As with almost any collection of short stories, I found some stories excellent and some only okay. The authors set their tales either in the past (once), the present, or the future. Roshani Chokshi reveals a new side to the tale of Elaine and Lancelot in "Passing Fair and Young," Waubgeshig Rice places a young Arthur in an Anishinaabeg community where he learns about his culture and traditions from his mysterious Uncle Merle in "Heartbeat," and Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes of a woman in a a tower many years in the future who savors memories from a beautiful young man she calls Lancelot in "A Shadow in Amber." There are two kinds of readers who will be wowed by this collection--people who are looking for new-to-them science fiction and fantasy authors, and those who are die-hard Arthurian nerds. Kudos to the editors and writers for bringing new life to these well-loved stories and characters.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices 

Edited by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington 

Vintage July 2021

480 pages

Read via Netgalley 

Review: Orange World and Other Stories

Karen Russell is a highly awarded author whose stories are both beautiful and unsettling. Her newest collection, Orange World and Other Stories, is full of tales of worlds that are just a bit more bizarre than the one we live in.

The book starts with a pair of friends hoping to take advantage of a few marks at a fancy hotel, only to discover that the party they've crashed is attended only by ghosts. In The Bad Graft and Bog Girl, characters spend time in nature as a woman pricks her finger on a Joshua tree and a young man falls in love with the body of a woman pulled from the bog. It's not the only pairing, as men consider their purposes in The Tornado Auction and Black Corfu (although careers raising tornadoes and preventing the undead from rising are as different as can be). The final two stories may have been my favorite, though. In The Gondoliers, sisters traverse the dangerous waters of a post-apocalyptic Florida by singing and in Orange World, a new mother encounters a devil who preys on her fears and demands to be fed.

The stories are often funny and always dropping you into strange, new worlds. Russell is a literary wizard who imagines scenarios that could never exist in any other writer's head. Somehow in the midst of ghosts, zombies, and devils, she makes us think about the most vulnerable moments of our humanity and how we make decisions for ourselves and the people we love.  I can't wait to see what strange and beautiful places Russell will take us next.

Orange World and Other Stories
By Karen Russell
Knopf Publishing Group May 2019
288 pages
From the library

My Favorite Stories from How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

Novelist N.K. Jemisin's recent publication of a short story collection made fans of sci-fi writing very excited. I started this collection from a unique perspective: although I've been meaning to read Jemisin's Inheritance and Broken Earth trilogies for a while, this was my first time reading her work.

Like most short story collections, some selections resonate more than others. I found it a bit difficult to get into this book because the first story is told in a distinctly distant manner. An unnamed narrator takes the reader through the city of Um-Helat on the Day of Good Birds and shows us all the ways their society is different from ours. But once I started reading the second story, I was pulled right into Jemisin's incredible imagination, the very different worlds she created, and the characters she brought to vivid life. I discovered that the stories I loved best had a historical flair to them as opposed to being set strictly in a future world, but you may fall in love with the tales of a girl whose intelligence means she will be taken from her family or a woman who goes missing on another planet among an alien race with big secrets.

Here are a few of my favorite stories:

Red Dirt Witch is an early story that follows Emmaline and her children in Alabama. Emmaline has a gift for dreaming prophetic dreams, so she knows that the White Lady will be coming to visit them. But she doesn't expect that the woman will demand one of her children in return for safety for the rest as change comes to the South, full of violence and struggle. This one might be perfect for readers who love Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane. 

L'Alchimista is the story of a grumpy chef in an Italian inn named Franca. After a delicious meal, a stranger offers her an unusual challenge: follow a recipe and make a specific dish using the strange, perhaps impossible, ingredients he has provided.

The Effluent Engine is a steampunk story set in New Orleans. Jessaline is determined to find a scientist who can take the waste from rum production and turn it into methane gas, but she didn't expect to have competition or discover that the scientist's beautiful sister can make the theory a reality and steal her heart in the process.

Cuisine des Memoires starts off unremarkably, with Yvette inviting her friend Harold to dinner. But Harold soon learns that the Maison Laveau serves very unique meals. In fact, they claim that they can recreate any meal from any place in the world throughout history. When the kitchen serves up the very meal that his ex-girlfriend made for him, Harold is determined to find out how they make this miraculous food.

Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters is the last story in the collection. The water is rising and the levee is about to break, but Tookie is still in New Orleans. He is going to need the help of a talking lizard and his elderly neighbor Miss Mary to get through the flood and survive whatever is living in the floodwaters.


Did you read this story collection? Which one was your favorite?



How Long 'Til Black Future Month?
By N.K. Jemisin
Orbit November 2018
416 pages
From the library 

Mini-reviews: What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and Summer Days and Summer Nights

Helen Oyeyemi is known for writing novels that are unexpected, a bit dark, and based on fairy tales. In What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, the stories concern doorways and keys, sometimes in minor details and sometimes as an integral part of the story. Some characters jump stories, showing up as a protagonist in one and a minor character in another. As with many short story collections, I read some stories I adored and some that I really had to commit to finishing.

books and roses is amazingly executed and one of those stories I wished would spark a whole novel. It follows a young woman who was left on the steps of a monastery as a baby with a note and a key. She now works in a hotel doing laundry, where she encounters a wealthy painter who wears a key around her neck too. Their lives will intersect in incredible and magic ways. Oyeyemi seems to shine brightest when she is writing of the past, of fables and fairy tales like in drownings. But I also enjoyed the modern story a brief history of the homely wench society,where a group of young women prank a fraternity, and presence, in which a couple undergoes an experiment and sees the son they never knew. Helen Oyeymi is inarguably an incredibly talented writer and I will gladly explore any magic land she creates.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
By Helen Oyeyemi
Riverhead Books March 2016
325 pages
From the library

YA writer Stephanie Perkins edited a story collection entitled My True Love Gave To Me, which features stories about falling in love during the magic of winter. The collection was so popular that a second one was released this May, which focused on summer flings. Summer Days and Summer Nights is a great way to find new YA authors and it features a wonderfully diverse group of characters.

In "Head, Scales, Tongue, Tail," a boy and a girl start a tentative romance in a summer town where a monster supposedly swims in the lake. It was the perfect start to a bunch of stories about summer. Libba Bray's "Last Night at the Cinegore" might be more of a horror homage than a love story, but it's a lot of fun. Perkins checks in with her characters from the winter book with "In Ninety Minutes, Turn North" and I loved seeing how the relationship between Marigold and North had changed. "Souvenirs" is the tale of two boys breaking up before going off to college at the amusement park where they both work. This is the perfect collection to relive the joy of your first summer love, while sitting on your porch with a cool glass of lemonade.

Summer Days and Summer Nights
Edited by Stephanie Perkins
St. Martin's Griffin May 2016
400 pages
Read via Netgalley

Mini-reviews: Tales of Accidental Genius and A Tyranny of Petticoats

Simon Van Booy is the beloved author of the novels The Illusion of Separateness and Everything Beautiful Began After. In Tales of Accidental Genius, his second short story collection, he takes readers to the pet store with an old man hoping to help his fish and with a fashion designer on her trip to find inspiration. A couple is torn apart by the wife's alcoholism and infidelity and the final story is a Chinese folktale through the eyes of a film director who wants to make a different kind of movie.

Tales of Accidental Genius will not give you high speed chases or epic battles. Instead, the stories focus on quiet moments of understanding and the melancholy of loneliness. The genius referenced in the title has nothing to do with admission to Mensa or high test scores. Instead, the genius in these stories is the one that comes from kindness, from doing the right thing even when it's difficult or unexpected. So often in literary fiction, we read about darkness and pain and loss. But these tales give us hope that kind people do still exist in the world and that, once in a while, goodness is rewarded.

Tales of Accidental Genius
By Simon Van Booy
Harper Perennial November 2015
272 pages
From my shelves

In A Tyranny of Petticoats, 15 of the best young adult writers bring history alive through the stories of brave, smart young women. In the introduction, editor Jessica Spotswood says that their aim was to bring American history to life. They travel through the Alaskan wilderness in the 18th century, carry out espionage for the Union during the Civil War, and fall in love with a fellow riveter during WWII.

Collections like this one are a perfect way to hook you on new authors. One of my favorites was Leslye Walton's El Destinos, which reimagined the Fates are three young sisters in 1848 Texas. It was such a clever and unique spin on a well-known tale. I also greatly enjoyed Gold in the Roots of the Grass by Marissa Meyer, where a young Chinese women gets more than she bargained for when she tries to speak to spirits in a mining town. Y.S. Lee introduces readers to The Legendary Garrett Girls, sisters who refuse to let a man take over their Alaskan bar. While not every story is equal, I love that this collection is not just populated by white girls and it equally features girls fighting for love and marriage and girls who want nothing to do with it because they have awesome things to do. This is a book I will be happy to share with my daughter in another decade or so!

A Tyranny of Petticoats
Edited by Jessica Spotswood
Candlewick Press March 2016
368 pages
From the library

Review: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

By Karen Russell

Vintage January 2014

256 pages

Borrowed from my sister

Short story collections so often leave the reader desiring something more. We love some stories, but find others forgettable. We wish that each story in the collection reached the artistry of our favorite. Readers need not worry about Vampires In The Lemon Grove - every story is incredible and memorable.

These stories are incredibly diverse and each of them has their own brand of creepiness that will make the hair rise up on the back of your arm as you peek behind you to ensure you are still alone. In the first story, we meet an elderly vampire who is not so enamored with living forever after all. He has made a life for himself and his wife in a lemon grove, where they suck lemons instead of drinking blood. We also encounter a girl who begins work in a Japanese silk factory with some terrifying results, a soldier whose tattoo changes to match what he believes about his time in the military, and a boy who deeply regrets his bullying ways after encountering a scarecrow.

Some of the stories read like dark fairy tales, while others seem like historical fiction with a bizarre bent. It's obvious that Russell did a great deal of research on a variety of subjects - early settlers on the prairie, United States presidents, and the habits of various kinds of Antarctic wildlife. It's just enough knowledge to make the reader feel at home wherever and whenever Russell drops us.

We know from childhood that there is something unsettling, perhaps even frightening, about darkness. We root for the hero to defeat the monster and bring the light back. But in Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell forces readers to confront some very adult questions about those childhood ghost stories. What if the darkness is not in the monsters, but in us? Is darkness always a bad thing or can our darkness sometimes help us to rise more powerfully than ever before?

Why Should We Read Short Stories?

There is something wonderful about really sinking into a novel or biography. You know that you will have several hundred pages to learn about these people and experience all of the things that they go through. But there is also something captivating about a short story collection. If you are a devoted short story reader or someone who is apprehensive about them, read on! It's time to break down all of the ways short story collections are great!

1) They are perfect for the reader pressed for time.
Making time for reading is sometimes difficult. Some days you barely clean up the dinner dishes before you fall asleep, so who has time to read 700 pages of The Goldfinch? The short story collection was written just for you. Do you have a few minutes while waiting for the kids to get off the bus? Maybe your doctor is running late for your appointment? It's short story time! Most stories are under 30 pages, which means you can feel the accomplishment of actually finishing a story in a short amount of time.

2) You can experience old favorites and new authors all in one place.
The short story collection that I most recently read - The Best American Short Stories 2013 - features respected authors like Junot Diaz and Alice Munro, but I also got to experience writers like Joan Wickersham and Steven Millhauser, who I had never read before.

3) It's the best place to experience a plethora of styles and stories.
 Where else can you read one book and find a story about a couple hoping to get pregnant, a teen who sleeps with an older woman while worrying about the impending apocalypse, and a woman trying to get a donation from a wealthy author for an organization at-risk for teen girls? In one place, you can find stories told in stark prose that break your heart in just a few pages and gorgeous descriptions that take you to new and distant places.

4) It stretches you as a reader.
Your reading brain can grow complacent if you only ever read one sort of book. If you only ever read historical tomes about WWII or fantasy featuring dragons, your reading might need a bit of a shakeup! I find short story collections a great way to break out of a reading slump or just give my mind the opportunity to experience a different length and a different kind of writing.  

5) Short stories force authors to work at the top of their games.
Have you ever read a book where you wish a discerning editor had cut 150 pages or so? It can happen easily in novels or nonfiction, where there is no page limit. In short stories, every phrase has to count. Writers craft some of their greatest sentences and most ingenious plot twists within the parameters of 30 pages. 


I just saw that the ladies at the Socractic Salon have been discussing short stories too! Make sure to stop by and see what they think.

Do you read short story collections? Why do you enjoy them?

Review: Almost Famous Women

Almost Famous Women

By Megan Mayhew Bergman

Scribner January 2015

256 pages

From the library 

Those of us who love to read history will sometimes find people lurking in the peripheries. They are people you won't find in your high school history textbook or featured in a special on The History Channel. They are the almost famous ones and they are exactly the people that Megan Mayhew Bergman brings to life in her new collection of stories.

The women we meet in these pages are from all over history - a little girl abandoned by her famous father, twins literally attached to each other, a musician in the first integrated female swing band, and the women imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Each story is a new experience, as Bergman flips perspectives. In "A High-Grade Bitch Sits Down To Lunch," Beryl Markham determines to ride her new horse, embracing her reputation for being tough. Romaine Brook's story, though, is narrated by the artist's houseboy Mateo. We meet many of these women at the end of their lives when they can only look back at their glory days through a fog of illness and depression.

Some of these tales seem to touch on entire lives, while others give us just a single moment told in a page or two. It would be easy for these stories to become strict homages to these women, but Mayhew takes the more honest and interesting approach. Some of these women are cruel to those around them. Others are self-destructive, ensuring their own downfall. 

My favorite story was about two females - one who had lost everything and one who never had the chance to gain an adult life. An unnamed nun forms an attachment with a girl who has been left at the convent by her father. The girl's father just happens to be the famous poet Lord Byron. Our protagonist finds a kindred spirit in the girl's anger and wild spirit. I found myself desperately hoping that these two could find some happiness with each other, but the women in these stories rarely find happy endings. These are women who didn't fit in the carefully constructed boxes prescribed by society. Their bravery is inspiring, but their fates are often tragic. 

In the notes at the end of the book, Bergman confesses that she found daredevil Hazel Eaton via Internet rabbit hole. Almost Famous Women will be that jumping-off point for many readers. The stories here serve as just enough to whet the appetite, to spark our interest and spur us on to research them further, and to give these women a permanent spot in our memories. 

Review: My True Love Gave to Me

My True Love Gave To Me

Twelve Holiday Stories

Edited by Stephanie Perkins

St. Martin's Press 2014

321 pages

From the library

My knowledge of YA authors is rather slim. I've read most of Rainbow Rowell's books and of course know about the juggernaut that is John Green. Other than that, I tend to steer clear of the young adult section. When I do happen to wander over that way, it's rather daunting to know where to start. I thought this anthology of holiday stories might help me whittle down my list and pick a few YA authors to try. It did.  It was also a total delight to read and I can see myself buying this anthology and cracking it open each December.

These stories are all centered around the holidays, but I appreciated that they weren't all about Christmas. The first story, by Rainbow Rowell, was about two best friends at their annual New Year's Eve bash over several years. Two other stories feature Jewish protagonists and Holly Black even tackles Krampuslauf, which celebrates the evil spirit who visits bad children instead of Saint Nicholas.

Each of the writers featured in this collection wrote really good stories that left me wanting a longer story, perhaps even a whole book. Some of these characters are still in high school and others are in their first years of college, but there was a good balance of teenage impulse and the beginnings of understanding about relationships and responsibility. Shy is spending Christmas cat-sitting for his boss in "Angels in the Snow" and Maria from "Welcome to California, CA" is working in the local diner because of family financial problems.

There is also a variety of settings, time periods, and genres to be found between these covers. "The Lady and The Fox" and "The Girl Who Woke The Dreamer" are both set in the past and have supernatural flair. "It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown" and "Your Temporary Santa," on the other hand, are decidedly modern and feel like they might have happened to your friend or maybe even to you.

It's rare to find an anthology where you enjoy all of the stories. While I obviously had favorites, this is a fantastic collection of stories that celebrate the joy of relationships and the magic of the holidays. My True Love Gave To Me is the perfect choice to read while hiding out from your crazy family on Christmas, while lazing about on winter break, or just when you are craving a bit of holiday magic at any point during the year.