The inspiration for this post arose when reading Nightbitch. It was the reminder of short stories being spontaneous, representing a theme but creative. These are the type of books in short form we no longer see very often on the shelves in bookstores. We are often lost in larger books where authors have created 'a whole new world' to explore. Sometimes, we need authors to spare us every little detail by creating a short but wonderful book that leaves our imagination curious.
Nightbitch / Rachel Yodder (227p)
This book is about motherhood, career, freedom & self-identity, The MC of this book is a SAHM, looking after her young child. Her husband goes out to work, sometimes being long-distance for long periods of time. The separation between them makes the mother feel lonely, especially after being a busy career woman who was always well dressed & poised. Over time, she complains about feeling like a dog.
Milk Fed / Melissa Broder (259p)
Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.
Weird Fucks / Lynne Tilman (58p)
A young woman drifts through dimly lit bars and rented rooms, reporting from the erogenous zones of New York and Europe. Encountering increasingly bizarre sexual situations, she turns her curious, comic, and fierce eye onto the contemporary world of sex and desire.
The Dangers of Smoking In Bed / Marina Enriques (208p)
Welcome to Buenos Aires, a place of nightmares and twisted imaginings, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses. Thrumming with murderous intentions, family betrayals and morbid desires, these stories shine a light on a violent city gripped by urban madness; giving voice to the lost, the oppressed and the forgotten. Lucid and darkly poetic, unsettling and otherworldly, these tales of revenge, witchcraft and fetishes are a masterpiece of contemporary Gothic and a bewitching exploration of the dark inclinations that threaten to lead us over the edge.
Bear / Marian Engel (130p)
Lou is a librarian at the local Heritage Institute who lives a mole-like existence, buried among maps and manuscripts in her dusty basement office. She heads north after finding something left behind. When she arrives, she ends up tending for a bear.
Strange Weather In Tokyo / Hiromi Kawakami (220p)
Tsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, 'Sensei', in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food and drink sake, and as the seasons pass - from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms - Tsukiko and Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
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