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Other People's Stories
A Dutch factory worker reaches an important milestone; the letter G is banned; a Korean scientist engages in an unorthodox protest; aliens make first contact in Harrow; a jaded circus monkey learns to love again.
At the beginning of 2014, Patrick Kidd made a resolution to write a short story every week for a whole year, based on prompts collected online. The resulting 53 stories run the gamut from comic to pensive, intimate to sweeping, realistic to fantastical - but always absorbing, thought-provoking and written in a single week.
These stories are now collected for the first time in a single volume, with a foreword by the author.
At the beginning of 2014, Patrick Kidd made a resolution to write a short story every week for a whole year, based on prompts collected online. The resulting 53 stories run the gamut from comic to pensive, intimate to sweeping, realistic to fantastical - but always absorbing, thought-provoking and written in a single week.
These stories are now collected for the first time in a single volume, with a foreword by the author.
293 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 2, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 19, 2020
Other People’s Stories is a charming collection of short stories, all by the same author, but all inspired by different people. Patrick Kidd has taken inspiration from short prompts (ranging from a sentence or two, down to but a couple of words), and spun out engaging tales just long enough to grab attention and take the reader on a journey.
He tackles a range of topics and genres; bouncing around without getting jarring or going stale. An artefact of the character limit and time frame that the stories were written in, some of the stories feel almost like the narratives for children’s books, approaching their topics in an accessible while still addressing complex or weighty topics.
Some of the stories have an almost autobiographical feel to them, such as our protagonist getting lost at night while geocaching, much to the irritation of his long suffering partner. Others are a thinly veiled tongue in cheek look at the local politics of the time, with a cephalopod referendum led by a Sturgeon opposed by a Cameron and Clegg.
All in all, this was a fun read, and can be enjoyed either several slices at a time, or interspersed amongst other books. Sometimes I would read a few short stories back to back, other times it was the perfect thing to pick up when a long work day had left me too tired for the much more plodding pace of a full novel. I can also safely say that there are good few short stories in this collection that I would enjoy reading if they were expanded into full novels in their own right.
In the interests of full disclosure, I did supply a prompt for one of the stories (and naturally, it’s my favourite); however I paid for my own copy of this book, and the review and rating were not solicited by the author.
He tackles a range of topics and genres; bouncing around without getting jarring or going stale. An artefact of the character limit and time frame that the stories were written in, some of the stories feel almost like the narratives for children’s books, approaching their topics in an accessible while still addressing complex or weighty topics.
Some of the stories have an almost autobiographical feel to them, such as our protagonist getting lost at night while geocaching, much to the irritation of his long suffering partner. Others are a thinly veiled tongue in cheek look at the local politics of the time, with a cephalopod referendum led by a Sturgeon opposed by a Cameron and Clegg.
All in all, this was a fun read, and can be enjoyed either several slices at a time, or interspersed amongst other books. Sometimes I would read a few short stories back to back, other times it was the perfect thing to pick up when a long work day had left me too tired for the much more plodding pace of a full novel. I can also safely say that there are good few short stories in this collection that I would enjoy reading if they were expanded into full novels in their own right.
In the interests of full disclosure, I did supply a prompt for one of the stories (and naturally, it’s my favourite); however I paid for my own copy of this book, and the review and rating were not solicited by the author.
June 19, 2021
“Other People’s Stories” was one of my favorite reads of the last year. I was equally eager to dive into each new story as I was sad to leave the nuanced characters and adventures behind on the pages prior. I found that each story started and ended beautifully, wrapping me up swiftly and warmly into the world inspired by each individual prompt, and always leaving me at the right point — never belabored in the endings, something I find happens often in short stories as there’s a mad dash to end. I loved reading about the monkey who escaped from the circus and a family’s pet dinosaur and awkwardly embarrassing situations around a crush on a yoga instructor. I loved this book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews