The Rabbi In The Attic by Eileen Pollack

Tags

anthology, contemporary fiction, literary fiction, short stories

The Rabbi In The Attic is a collection of short stories written by Eileen Pollack who covers a wide range of topics .

In The Rabbi In The Attic, Eileen Pollack has brought together a collection of short stories which although written from a Jewish woman’s viewpoint, are so filled with humanity and universal truths that there is something in there for everyone.

There are stories examining the relationships between parents and child, between the old and new traditions and in the titular story between orthodoxy and progressive rabbis.

There are two stories which look at the beginning of the working life of a young girl and the relationship she forms with a school teacher and then how the relationship changes when she is a grown woman, two snapshots of the same life showing how no matter how much things change, there are some values and people which never change.

My favourite story is the Rabbi In The Attic and I felt deep sympathy with the young female rabbi and for the old, orthodox man whose entire identity was wrapped up in the old, traditional ways.

If you are looking for a short story collection to dip into, you could do a lot worse than choose this fine collection by Eileen Pollack.

You can buy The Rabbi In The Attic from Amazon UK, Amazon US and Waterstones. The author’s website is here.

Carniepunk by Various

Tags

anthology, horror, short stories, speculative fiction, steampunk

I have always found carnivals and traveling fairs very sinister places; places where the ‘freaks’ and dispossessed gather together and, at least in my imagination, seduce the unaware into the underworld, never to be seen again. It seems I’m not alone in my madness as Carniepunk, an anthology of urban fantasy stories set in and around traveling fairs, proves.

There is a wide variety of stories in this book and many, like ‘The Werewife’ by Rachel Caine (one of my favourites) have a dark, surreal, nightmarish quality to them.

For me, the best story in the collection is ‘The Demon Barker of Wheat Street’ by Kevin Hearne. Here, the author manages to blend his vision of hell with comedy – a psychic dog who sees “…a poodle in my future” – very successfully. I was glad to see that the short story takes place within a world created by the author in other books and novellas. I’ll certainly be checking those out soon.

One or two of the tales were a little ‘teenage’ for my tastes, particularly The Cold Girl, again by Rachel Caine, but in an anthology, it’s rare to love every story equally.

If you are a fan of urban fantasy or have a fascination for Carnivale, you could do worse than read this collection of short fiction. A good read.

How They Were Found by Matt Bell

Tags

anthology, literary fiction, short stories

It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a collection of short stories as much as I did How They Were Found. Matt Bell is a wonderful writer: his stories are varied in topic and style, but he never fails to find the voice of each of his characters, making them real, even when the world they inhabit is very different from any we might recognise.

Take the opening story, The Cartographer’s Girl. Here we are introduced to the cartographer, who is drawing detailed and annotated maps of the city in an effort to find the love that he lost. His story is heartbreaking and beautifully told, each word chosen with care. It is followed by The Receiving Tower, a dystopian tale about hanging on to hope when there is no reason to. I found the plight of the men in this piece – and the way they face up to it – to be so devastatingly sad. I wanted to reach out to them, to offer them some morsel of hope, even though I know I would be lying to them. They stayed with me long after I finished the book.

This collection isn’t all doom and gloom, however. The Leftover is a humorous fable about accepting people for who they are and not trying to change them.

There isn’t one story in this collection I didn’t enjoy. To be honest, I am quite jealous of the author. I want to hate him, but his talent and skill are such that I’d like to be him when I grow up.

A wonderful anthology from a fabulous author.