Interpolated Stories

by David Rose

Interpolated Stories is a collection of eight stories by David Rose, two of which are published for the first time. It also features eight images created by the artist Leah Leaf in response to the stories. The book is the first of a series of
collaborations between writers and artists that Confingo will publish over the next two years.

These texts were born out of a sense of frustration with the author’s own short stories, along with much other current short fiction, and a need to open up the formal possibilities of the short story; an acknowledgement that the world is too various, reality too multistranded, to be restricted to a single perspective or narrative plane. The resulting texts – using a variety of discursive voices to interrupt and sometimes disrupt previously written stories – are therefore partly provocative, partly ludic, but offer possibilities to be further explored, in opening up the short story form, adding further dimensions, and breaking the narrative fourth wall.

Genres: Short Stories

81 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2022

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Rose, author of the superb Meridian, returns with a series of short-shorts reimagined with “interpolations”—semibold insertions from the author into the original stories, all of which were published in un-interpolated form in magazines spanning two decades. Published by Mancunian indie publisher Confingo, the collection combines images from Leah Leaf alongside the stories, creating a striking art-book of the sort seen plopped alongside gallery exhibitions. The stories are strange little vignettes of a whimsical nature peppered with wordplay, each too slight to make an impact, and the interpolations seem like an unnecessary shoehorning in of self-regarding cleverness, detracting from the tales themselves.