Category Archives: LITERATURE

This short story by Aryn Kyle starts out with immediate tension, one that is well known and understood in some form by most readers: change, leaving the comfort of the known to be the new member of an already established … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Written by Stellar Kim, this short story is also written in a different style format, in the naming of incidents to separate the paragraphs into a more aloof, documentary told story.  This mimics in fact the first person narrator’s need … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This one’s edgy.  Roy Kesey has written a story about passengers in an airport forced to wait what turns out to be days while a lot of strange stuff goes on.  The writing style, short, quick, action-paced sentences get us … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Another of my favorites here, this story by Beverly Jensen is an excellent example of insight into a family script via dialogue in particular, and brought out by a dramatic change in the lives of the characters via the death … Continue reading → Continue reading →

By Beverly Jensen, this short story starts out with a most interesting complication: Boston, January 1956"Good God Almighty.  We’ve lost the damned body."  Avis stood on the North Station train platform, her small leather suitcase pressed between her knees as … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Written by Lauren Groff, this story is one that contains all the elements of good narrative.  There is drama, there is conflict, there is a pace that keeps steady and builds and recedes with the plot points.  It also scored … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Written by Mary Gordon, this short story also seems like it is of another era, or perhaps it just the lifestyle that seems foreign. There is a setting of a false sense of security and  affectation in a woman who … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This time I’ve placed the author in the post title rather than the title of his story, and if I could festoon it with flowers and candles in a semblance of altar I would; I would indeed honor him. Sometimes … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Surprised by the inclusion of this story by Joseph Epstein, surprised by its publication in The Hudson Review.  It’s too stable a story, too interesting, very much character-based and a reflection of life and family.  In other words, a good … Continue reading → Continue reading →

By Joseph Epstein, a short story written in the traditional manner of laying out character by character. Even as the first person narrator of Lou tells the story of his brother Eli who is a writer, the telling is more … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This short story by Randy DeVita is very well put together.  Opening with a scenario of a father getting up in the night to check on his young son, it goes into recall of the man’s own relationship with his … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The title of this story by T. C. Boyle refers to a dog of that name and the story of its adventure that Angelle’s father read to her when she was younger.  The story opens with Angelle being primed by … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Ah, I don’t know.  I’m beginning to think that Stephen King made this issue an homage to a few well established, well published, well credentialed authors and while of course the stories are good, I’m not exactly jumping up and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This short story by Louis Auchincloss rather surprised me; I thought I was reading something from the era of Dorothy Parker.  It is of that style, of that era, yet written I believe fairly recently.  The storyworld is one that … Continue reading → Continue reading →

A friend suggested I read this story by John Barth because she was really impressed by the turnaround in the ending.  Since I had just received the collection via UPS about fifteen minutes prior to her phone call, it took … Continue reading → Continue reading →