The Best British Short Stories 2011

The Best British Short Stories #1

by Nicholas Royle (editor)

Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume. Neither genre nor Granta shall be overlooked in the search for the very best new short fiction.

The first book of the series includes stories published in 2010 by the following authors: David Rose, Hilary Mantel, Lee Rourke, Leone Ross, Claire Massey, Christopher Burns, Adam Marek, SJ Butler, Heather Leach, Alan Beard, Kirsty Logan, Philip Langeskov, Bernie McGill, John Burnside, Robert Edric, Michèle Roberts, Dai Vaughan, Alison Moore and Salley Vickers.


Table of Contents:
Flora – David Rose
Winter Break – Hilary Mantel
Emergency Exit – Lee Rourke
Love Silk Food – Leone Ross
Feather Girls – Claire Massey
Foreigner – Christopher Burns
Dinner of the Dead Alumni – Adam Marek
The Swimmer – SJ Butler
So Much Time in a Life – Heather Leach
Staff Development – Alan Beard
The Rental Heart – Kirsty Logan
Notes on a Love Story – Philip Langeskov
No Angel – Bernie McGill
Slut’s Hair – John Burnside
Comma – Hilary Mantel
Moving Day – Robert Edric
Tristram and Isolde – Michèle Roberts
Looted – Dai Vaughan
When the Door Closed, It Was Dark – Alison Moore
Epiphany – Salley Vickers

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, Collections

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2011

About the author

Nicholas Royle is an English writer. He is the author of seven novels, two novellas and a short story collection. He has edited sixteen anthologies of short stories. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He works as a fiction reviewer for The Independent and the Warwick Review and as an editor for Salt Publishing.

Reviews

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the 2018 and 2020 anthologies and gave both of them 4 stars. For this collection (the first one in the series) I am giving 3 stars. However, it is a strong 3 stars – my enthusiasm for reading these annual collections is not diminished, because there were quite a few good stories in this 2011 collection. 🙂 🙃

I ordered all the other anthologies and will get to them in due time.

1. Flora – David Rose [5 stars… I liked this opening story a whole lot…it was sort of creepy and I wondered when the other shoe was going to drop, and the length of the story was just right. An older man is a docent at a botanical garden and also collects antique books on botany.very smart…and a young women comes into the library of the botanical gardens and is sketching plants and one event leads to another and she is in his personal library at his home sketching plants drinking martinis! He follows her when she is away from him with binoculars. Oh myyyyy. Loved it.]
2. Winter Break – Hilary Mantel [I have to give this 4.5 stars because it was so taut, and so well written but the ending disturbed me. It was the very last sentence…the ending sentence. Very disturbing. From: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (Fourth Estate, 2014)]
3. Emergency Exit – Lee Rourke [5 stars]
4. Like Silk Food – Leone Ross [3.5. stars]
5. Feather Girls – Claire Massey [3.5 stars]
6. Foreigner – Christopher Burns [4 stars]
7. Drivers of the Dead Alumni – Adam Marek [1.5 stars]
8. The Swimmer – S.J. Butler [3.5 stars]
9. So Much Time In a Life – Heather Leach [1 star]
10. Staff Development – Alan Beard [1.5 stars]
11. The Rental Heart – Kirsty Logan [2 stars]
12. Notes on a Love Story – Philip Langeskov [4 stars] This was good. It was interestingly structured. It was about 3 pages in length of text but about 4 pages of footnotes. So it was interesting to go back and forth between the text and the footnotes. Now if this was a book and I had to do that going back and forth, it might have gotten tedious/annoying. But this was fine.
13. No Angel – Bernie McGill [4 stars] Father who dies of lung cancer comes back as a ghost to his daughter. His son (and her brother) was killed by hoodlums…it was the 1980s and this was Northern Ireland…
14. Slut’s Hair – John Burnside [3 stars]
15. Comma – Hilary Mantel [3 stars… From: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (Fourth Estate, 2014)]
16. Moving Day – Robert Edric [2 stars]
17. Tristan and Isolde – Michele Roberts [2.5 stars]
18. Looted – Dais Vaughan [4 stars [A soldier in WWII takes a painting from a deserted bombed-out house, and many years later has to return it. I didn’t entirely get the ending, but the story was interesting and well written.
19. When the Door Closed, It Was Dark – Alison Moore [4 stars] Another good story. But I didn’t get the ending. Again. But again, that was OK…the story line and the writing carried the day.
20. Epiphany – Sally Vickers [5 stars] A nice way to end the collection with a very good story. A man is reunited with his father (father is in his 60s and son might be 40) Mother is dying and that is why the son got in tough with his father who has not seen since he was a baby. It appears the mother told a lie to the son in that she said her husband left here, but he says she threw him out of the house. It was a little late for the son to go to his dying mom and find out who was telling the lie…it was a very poignant story. I have read ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ (published 2000) by her and loved it.

Reviews:
• https://bookaroundthecorner.com/2011/...
• http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews...

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yay! It's here at last. In my hand. My story sits bang in the middle. Very proud to be chosen along with luminaries such as Hilary Mantel and Michele Roberts. I've read most of it, albeit unproofed as I had a proof copy sent a couple of months ago. Just a couple of stories to go.

..well of course I've given it five stars but it's not only because my story is included. No, not at all, at all. (turning Irish for a minute). No it's because all the stories in here are good to great to fab. No filler at all. If you wanted to know about the current state of the British short story this would be a good place to start. I think it's very different from the 'Best Of..' story anthologies from the US I've read, but i realise I've only read about 5 or 6 of those, and most from the late 80s/90s era when Carveresque 'Dirty realism' was the prevailing mode. Mine are a bit like that, and there are other stories in here that are of the Carver/Ford/Wolff type (eg Burnside's 'Slut's Hair'), but there are many more of the quirky, supra-natural (supernatural is not quite the right term) type too.

There are several well known names (to me at least): David Rose’s intriguing Flora opens the collection (one of several here that need re-reading), followed by Hilary Mantel’s Winter Break, the first of two creepy and effective pieces that she contributes, later there’s Leone Ross’s fine ‘Love Silk Food’ which opens:

Mrs Neecy-Brown’s husband is falling in love. She can tell because the love is stuck to the walls of the house, making the wallpaper sticky, and it seeps into the calendar in her kitchen, so bad that she can’t see what the date is and the love keeps ruining the food… everything turns to mush ,

and there are excellent stories from Christopher Burns, Robert Edric and Dai Vaughan. John Burnside’s Slut’s Hair is a punch to the guts, about an abused wife:

She had to make out that she was pleased to see him, she had to make him think she’d waited up for him all this time, so she could make him a coffee or fetch him another drink, the moment he came in the door. Most of all, she had to pretend she didn’t know he was drunk, because that would mean she was judging him and he hated to be judged more than anything .

Sally Vickers' end story ('Epiphany') of a son meeting his estranged father on a beach is truly beautiful. Probably the story I enjoyed most of the ‘names I knew’ was Michele Roberts’ poetic 'Tristram and Isolde' which updates that story to a contemporary setting, but with such a shock in it that you need to re-read immediately.

Part of the forest transformed itself into a red stag.. on his head he bore his antlers like a tall crown, a candelabra of bone. All wreathed with streamers of green fern.

Of new names (to me – or writers I’ve heard of but hadn’t read) I found Bernie McGill’s No Angel a quiet and moving ghost story, Adam Marek’s Dinner of the Dead Alumni manic breathless fun, Alison Moore’s When the Door Closed it was Dark as claustrophobic as its title: as you read you can smell pig blood rising from it. All the stories here are well worth a read. Yes I would say that but give it a go and you'll see I'm not fibbing.

[J K · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Best British Short Stories” edited by Nicholas Royal

The trouble with a lot of short stories is that a lot of them just peter off, with nothing actually happening. There are some in this collection which do just that, but in the Introduction Nicholas Royale explains that he, too, was looking for some kind of resolution, i.e. a shift in perspective for the characters, by the end of each story. While Science Fiction and horror provides 'punchlines' more reliably, I found a lot of these stories hovered somewhere inbetween. There's ALMOST a resolution to most of these, but because of the length and the genre, interesting ideas tend to vaporise into ambiguity and raise more questions than they answer. But most of these stories are very well written and this collection is at least worth a try. A lot of them do become quite surreal, even if they don't all admit they're really science fiction or a similar genre. Basically, they're just stories, and some of their worlds are a bit off-kilter, which is always interesting to read.

Here are my thoughts on each short story, as I remember them. These brief summary reviews will contain spoilers depending on how satisfying the endings were:


BRIEF SPOILERS

Flora by David Rose

Slightly detached feel about this one. Interesting idea, about a man who helps a mysterious woman with her plant research by letting her into his extensive library. There’s something odd about her, but we never really learn what or who the chap she hangs around with is. When she vanishes, leaving nothing but defaced books behind, there’s just a sense of emptiness and a great deal left unexplained. The thrust seems to be that it’s bloody rude to deface library books, which is very true but annoying for a story with hints of something truly strange going on. A bit disappointing but very well written.

Winter Break by Hilary Mantel

Great story. At first appears to be about a childless couple’s unhappy journey to an unwelcoming, snow-smothered mountain holiday. Actually about them being in denial about what their driver to the resort has actually hit - and it’s not a baby goat. I liked this because of the sense of foreboding and the actual fury you feel when you realise the characters are actively avoiding getting involved in what they know is something more serious.

Emergency Exit by Lee Rourke

Sort of pointless until you go ‘oh, shi....’ . This sneakily insinuates ‘you’, the reader, into the text, and describes ‘you’ escaping an office through the titular ‘Emergency Exit’ and meeting a strange man on the stairs and climbing down the fire escape until you can only continue to go down, and down, and....well, I’m assuming it’s about a descent into Hell. Right? Was that what it was all about? Good for its sense of doom, but again lots left unsaid here.

Love Silk Food by Leone Ross

A great piece about a middle aged, Afro-Caribbean woman who is resigned to her husband cheating on her with ‘Excitement girls’ who are younger and flashier than her. She makes an unexpected connection on the London Underground and comes to a sort of peace within herself. I liked this, certainly not something I’d have sought out if it wasn’t in the collection, but I liked the insight and the woman’s attitude, and felt happier for having read it, although it’s hard to say exactly why. I think a character’s quiet self-acceptance is an good way to finish a story, though.

Feather Girls by Claire Massey

Certainly one of the more surreal, pseudo-science-fiction or fantasy stories in the collection. Matter-of-factly talks about men capturing the ‘feather women’ as their brides, while mixing up the mundane and the fantastic with slightly obscure construction. It riffs on the old legends of Kelpies and other fantastic beings whose animal skins get stolen by men seeking power over them. All interesting, and could also be an allegory, which is less fun. I would like to have seen this fleshed out, although it’s verging on the dreaded ‘magical realism’ here.

Foreigner by Christopher Burns

The downbeat story of an ex-soldier and his ex-wife quietly dealing with emotional fallout after the death of their beloved son, who was also a soldier. This was well told and very atmospheric, and the clashes of opinion over whether it is ever right to fight, the cost and brutal morality of war, is dealt with brilliantly in this initially tiny setting and short space of time. Very interesting, liked this a lot.

Dinner of the Dead Alumni by Adam Marek

First of all, as someone who lived in Cambridge for a year recently I LOVED the description on the town here. Set during one of the busiest weeks, this story follows a quest by a very tall man to find the one person on the planet who could, when they touch, orgasm instantaneously. Also, there are ghosts. It shouldn’t work, but there’s such a bustling yet deadpan humour about the whole tale that I couldn’t help enjoying it immensely. Very funny, with a dirty yet ultimately fitting payoff. Also, kind of glad I didn’t run into this chap whilst living in Cambridge!


The Swimmer by S J Butler

A woman takes a skinny dip in a river on a baking hot afternoon, and becomes obsessed with how it feels. I loved the moody setting, and the drifting feel of the river and the oppressive sense of heat is made palpable. She becomes drawn by a swan on the river, and I’m not sure if it survives or not in the end, or if she gets swept away and never returns, but I liked this story despite or perhaps actually because of the ambiguity.


So Much Time in a Life by Heather Leach

Didn’t really warm to this one at all, although I could understand the structure of the story and it seemed to be taking place inside a warped mother’s mind. Did she kill one of her children? Well written and moody but not really clear what happened, at least not to me.


Staff Development by Alan Beard

A man on the cusp of retirement, or redundancy, seeks to get some control back, whilst struggling to come to terms with the drug habit and enabling git of a husband his daughter has hooked up with. Not a lot seems to happen, I would have liked a bit more confrontation but that doesn’t seem to fit the character drawn here, who was very well realised but a bit too hopeless to really root for.


The Rental Heart by Kirsty Logan

Another story bordering on real science fiction. Hearts can be bought to help the owner to love the person they’re with, and heartbeats attuned to please the listener. A heart can literally be broken. It’s basically a story about restarting someone’s capacity to love, and how a real love can supercede the technology in place to fake it. Nicely odd, I liked this story which borders on Bradbury.

No Angel by Bernie McGill

Another sort of fantasy ghost story sort of story. It’s not clear how common being able to see dead relatives is in this particular universe, but the narrator doesn’t seem altogether surprised that her dead father pops up while she’s in the shower, and then again at different moments of her life. The other great tragedies in her life are revealed, and it’s suddenly made clear this is about the troubles in Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s. It does feel like it was all delusion at the end, but I liked the journey getting there, and the growing potential threat and the significant sense of change and perhaps a release, too.


Slut’s Hair by John Burnside

Brilliantly written account of a woman struggling to cope with an abusive partner. You WISH she could get away from this monster, who has invaded every part of her mind and even pulls out her rotten tooth so she won’t ‘make a face’ all the time. The tooth-pulling trauma seems to spur a moment of inner strength, and she doesn���t really escape her situation here. I do feel that her subsequent hallucination - although it could be a strange reality reaching out to her - of an odd, terrified little blue mouse is perhaps a sign of hope, symbolising a part of her the bastard hasn’t yet destroyed, and I loved the weirdness amid the horrible, unbearable home situation. A fantastic, strange and beautifully told story.


Comma by Hilary Mantel

This one reminds me strongly of Eraser Head, the surreal David Lynch film. There’s an odd baby, dysfunctional housing estates, and a childhood friendship that fails to stand the test of time. It’s really about families and friendships, and if this was written as a science fiction story a great deal more would have been made of the strange entity the two girls encounter. I’d have liked to know more. Instead, the story tilts back toward the friendship without really dealing with the strangest bit.


Moving Day by Robert Edric

This one reminds me a bit of ‘The Machine Stops’ by E M Forster, and an alternate version of the world in ‘The Road by Cormic McCarthy. Here, uptight bureaucracy comes banging on the door of a man living underground in a vast unused complex of buildings. Even the flies can’t exist in an outside world which is so polluted that the mountains have entirely disappeared from sight. The man remembers the tops of mountains and the names of clouds, and while not a great deal happens here, and it’s a little slow, it’s a good take on possible-future dystopia.

Tristram and Isolde by Michéle Roberts

OK, after the first page I thought the twist would show the narrator was a dog or something, except for the part where they brush their hair! Turns out, it was about a very dodgy relationship ‘Tristan’ has with an underage child. So this was ultimately creepy, very thought-provoking, and contained beautiful references to nature and the nature of love itself.


Looted by Dai Vaughan

Really liked this tale about a soldier who rescues a grubby painting from a war-ravaged house, only to discover it’s something remarkable. I appreciated the choice of artist it turns out to be, too, as Bocklin is one of my favourite painter. It ends wistfully, and not a great deal happens, but I liked this short story very much.

When the Door Closed, It Was Dark by Alison Moore

The penultimate story in the collection is a nightmarish story of an Au Pair who goes abroad to an undefined country to take care of a baby. The mother has vanished, and the grandmother doesn’t like her, and soon it becomes increasingly terrifying as the Au Pair loses control of everything, including her passport, and while there is a climax of sorts, her fate remains annoyingly unclear.

Epiphany by Salley Vickers

In this final story a young man reunites his estranged father with his dying mother. One of those stories where much is left unsaid, so it borders on banal, and it seems to be eclipsed by the broad nightmare of the story preceding it. Still a decent character study and a muted end to a strong short story collection.

[Dianne Ascroft · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Best British Short Stories 2011, edited by Nicholas Royle, is an eclectic collection. The stories delight with imaginative narrative, paint characters and places vividly and stimulate readers’ intellect and emotions; they are studies of characters, places and eras.
The stories fall into several genres, including fantasy, science fiction and literary fiction.
I believe the primary aims of a short story are to entertain, teach and raise questions. Most stories in this collection do at least one of these things. I’m a traditionalist and like stories to tell a tale. If a story teaches me something or makes me think about an issue as well, even better. I was disappointed with a few stories in the collection because they did not seem to have a purpose: there wasn’t a progressive plot and I couldn’t decide what the author wanted to say.
But other stories delighted me. The imaginative plots and descriptions in fantasies such as The Dinner of the Dead Alumni, The Rental Heart and Feather Girls captivate. Staff Development has a wicked sense of anti-establishment humour. Love Silk Food, Comma and Slut’s Hair create well drawn characters and settings. I was particularly moved by the plight of the main characters in Slut’s Hair and When the Door Closed, It Was Dark.
Bernie McGill’s No Angel is one of my favourite pieces in the book. It is an unusual ghost story that captures the tensions in a family, a community and Northern Ireland. For me, as an interloper in this country, it gives me insight into the back story to my adopted home and tells me things my neighbours never will.
Many of these stories aren’t the sort I would usually choose to read but now that I have, the emotions and images they evoked will linger.

[Russell George · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t think 2011 was a vintage year for British short fiction, at least not on the evidence of this collection. Almost every one of these annoyed me in some way; they were either too opaque or too clichéd, and I was never satisfied. The book took on that heavy quality every time I picked it up as I anticipated more frustration.

Maybe 2012 will be better. Someone will surely have commissioned a 2012 Olympic anthology, full of tales of doubt ridden weightlifters, sexually maladjusted table tennis players, and how the Hungarian handball team are actually controlled through a complicated system of pulleys and sleeping pills. That could be quite good, in which case I’m happy to write the last one.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heather Leach's story, 'So much time in a life' is almost worth giving this collection 5 stars alone. But I didn't, and so yes there are some that didn't appeal to me nearly as much. I have heard, no names, that this story is about nothing. Here is why this is wrong. This story is slippery. It constructs something for us and deconstructs it piece by piece. I think the title maybe clues us in; life runs out. We can live in fantasies and these can be unbound. And yet, conversely, are very very real. The lives in So Much run out without record and are just done. Really intriguing and from a teachery point of view, so available to pick apart for voice and layers of construction.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection with a standout story by our GR friend Alan Beard. Loved it!

[Bernie Mcgill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting anthology. I should come clean straight away and say I have a story ('No Angel') in this. My personal favourites: Adam Marek's 'Dinner of the Dead Alumni' for its humour, Heather Leach's 'So Much Time in a Life' for its originality, Kirsty Logan's 'The Rental Heart' for a new take on heartbreak, John Burnside's 'Slut's Hair' for its tension, Michele Roberts' 'Tristam and Isolde' for its twist (which had me fooled), Alison Moore's 'When the Door Closed It Was Dark' (because it was, very dark), and queen of them all, Hilary Mantel's 'Comma' for a beautiful piece of writing.

[Marion Granigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd give this six stars if they were available! in 2018, I discovered the glories of short fiction. I have always dismissed it as being, well, too short! In the examples we read at school I mostly felt that there was too much left untold. But this is an absolute gem of a collection - OK, one or two damp squibs, but, in general, a stellar collection. My prescription is to take one before bed every night. But, please, don't call me in the morning!

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comma
HILARY MANTEL
“He says, Mary, you don’t know arsesholes from Tuesday.”
…or from any other mark on the paper, I guess, punctuation or not. This is a story I would not have missed for a month of Sundays being added on to the end of my life. It is that special.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is one of its observations.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

You either like short stories or you don't. I do - short stories, when well-written, make you think. I particularly enjoyed Winter Break (Hilary Mantel), and Dinner of the Dead Alumni (Adam Marek). This is a good little collection and worth a read.

[Litro Magazine]

Litro Magazine review by Emily Cleaver: http://www.litro.co.uk/?p=7687

[Zoe King · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific selection as ever from Nick Royle.

[Shuggy L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Circumscribed lives of the British working class for the most part. Some interesting narrative structures. I will read the Best British Short Stories 2o13 book next. Salley Vicker's books are in the local library and might be worth a try.

1 David Rose: Flora - Recounts a random series of encounters with a young art student whose behavior is unexpectedly disappointing to the narrator.

2 Hilary Mantel: Winter Break - A modern couple who have decided not to have children.

3 Lee Rouke: Emergency Exit - A working man breaks through an emergency exit.

4 Leone Ross: Love Silk Food - A Jamaican woman’s husband leads to disappointment.

5 Claire Massey: Feather Girls - Village life and courting rituals.

6 Christopher Burns: Foreigner - Faulkland’s war and the war in Afghanistan.

7 Adam Marek: - Dinner of the Dead Alumni - A family visits Cambridge and the husband follows another woman in a disjointed fashion. Not endearing.

8 J.S.Butler: The Swimmer - A girl frees a swan from a fisherman’s fishing line.

9 Heather Leach: - So much time in life - Narrower career opportunities that women with children face.

10 Alan Beard: Staff Development - An older man is up for review at the office.

11 Kristy Logan: The Rental Heart - A person’s dating history.

12 Philip Langeskov: Notes on a Love Story - A writer’s girlfriend leaves him when he envisages the end of their relationship in a story.

13 Bernie McGill: No Angel - A family during the 1980s IRA bomb threats in Northern Ireland. Great story!

14 John Burnside: Slut’s Hair - Working class couple in an abusive relationship.

15 Hilary Mantel: Comma - Childhood friends.

16 Robert Edric: Moving Day - Three men in a discussion in a futuristic world.

17 Michele Roberts: Tristram and Isolde - A daughter is amused while her baby brother is born.

18 Dai Vaughan: Looted - WW2 story about a soldier’s picture.

19 Alison Moore: When the Door Closed, It was Dark - An au pair in a foreign country with a questionable family.

20 Salley Vickers: Epiphany - A young man, who has grown up with his mother and grandmother, finds his father after following up on an address at the top of a Christmas card envelope.

[Geraldine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've had to abandon this and won't be reading any compilations from subsequent years.

I accept that in doing this, I'm showing disrespect to all the decent writers whose excellent, good or adequate stories are included.
To explain, it's also important to explain that I'm not a prude. I enjoy reading steamy sex scenes in novels, in the past I read quite a bit of erotica and stopped doing so, not because of the sex but because of the dull stories, lazy characterisations and ghastly syntax.

However, there is a story in this which is basically a male wank fantasy about sexually assaulting a woman. It was truly horrible, this man pursuing this woman thorough the streets of Cambridge in order to touch her and ejaculate in his underpants. She's a girl even though her name badge says she's a doctor (of academia). And that's all she's allowed to do in this story.

I think it's worse that it was set in Cambridge, at some academic do, with - ridiculously - the ghosts of dead Cambridge academics roaming the streets. He sexually assaulted her and she wasn't even allowed the right to react. If it had been set in Slough or Hartlepool, it would have been spotted as being part of Rape Culture. But sexual predators in Cambridge colleges are somehow different from sexually predatory oiks.

I considered putting this behind me and moving onto more short stories. But how can I trust a compilation by an editor who thinks it's okay to celebrate sexual assault without any sort of analysis or any thought for the victim.

There is nothing in the introduction to warn the reader that they will be subjected to this nastiness

[Richard Kettlewood · Rating 5 out of 5]

RA

Excellent selection! For the most part literary in style, but contemporary and thought provoking. Nice to read stories from the point of view of exploited women: Slut's Hair and When the Door Closed, It was Dark really stood out. These year by year volumes of British short fiction are a wellspring of well written material. And a great way to find new authors. Top quality reading!

[Sam Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains Hilary Mantel's perfect 'Comma'. Also liked the Robert Edric one. Everything else meh.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leone Ross: Love Silk Food was the stand out story for me.