Tag: short story

A celebrated harper loses her instrument in an accident, and follows a domestic path that is no less musical than her previous life. This is a lovely and poetic story about music…

A woman (possibly Eve?) liberates animals, and herself, from their common names, and walks off into a world of poetry and specificity. This story has the feel of a fable or parable,…

A man recovering from eye surgery is mystified and intrigued by visions of a mysterious sea-side house, and on regaining his sight he loses the visions and, it would seem, his mind….

An injured archeologist is mesmerized by the appearance at dusk near his camp of a hoard of snakes. Ballard does a great job of capturing the tone of the British colonial mindset…

On their last day together, a husband and wife have to choose between the special and the mundane. This is a fairly realistic story with one strange wrinkle: when people are about…

A strange encounter at a pub shuttered during the pandemic causes the publican to reflect on the role his pub has played in his town’s social life, particularly as related to class…

Stories are shared on New Year’s Eve at Frank Martin’s drying-out house. A classic Carver story, meandering and poignant, with a good deal of humor to buoy the brokenness. I listed to…

A man tormented by his past hides on an island that had been used for nuclear weapons testing. This story has a post-apocalyptic feeling, even though the nuclear devastation has been limited…

A man discovers that he has the power to write a description of a person’s death and have it come to pass. This feels like a particularly dark “Twilight Zone” episode, with…