A Picador Paperback Original Tessa Hadley's stories trace the currents of desire, desperation, and mischief that that lie hidden inside domestic relationships. A mother hears her son's confession that he's cheating on his girlfriend; a student falls in love with a professor and initiates an affair with a man who looks just like him. A boy on a seaside vacation realizes that a grown-up woman is pressing dangerously close. In Tessa Hadley's Sunstroke and Other Stories, everyone conspires to hold the loving and stable surface of family life together, as old secrets and new appetites threaten to blow it apart.
Winner of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year An NPR Best Book of the Year The award-winning author of The Past once again "crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural" (Washington Post), in a collection of stories that elevate the mundane into the exceptional. The author of six critically acclaimed novels, Tessa Hadley has proven herself to be the champion of revealing the hidden depths in the deceptively simple. In these short stories it’s the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary: the history of a length of fabric or a forgotten jacket. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby; a child awake in the night explores the familiar rooms of her home, made strange by the darkness; a housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. The first steps into a turning point and a new life are made so easily and carelessly: each of these stories illuminate crucial moments of transition, often imperceptible to the protagonists. A girl accepts a lift in a car with some older boys; a young woman reads the diaries she discovers while housesitting. Small acts have large consequences, some that can reverberate across decades; private fantasies can affect other people, for better and worse. The real things that happen to people, the accidents that befall them, are every bit as mysterious as their longings and their dreams. Bad Dreams and Other Stories demonstrates yet again that Tessa Hadley "puts on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own. She is a true master" (Lily King, author of Euphoria).
The stories in "All Our Yesterdays..." and Nine Other Stories continue to explore the lives of the Cockburn family and other characters in and around the fictional town of Menninger, North Dakota, first created in the novel The Song Is Ended and continued in the novel The Dark Between The Stars and the short stories in Meatball Birds and Seven Other Stories. While the events and the characters found in the ten stories exist in rural and small town settings, the themes explored have a universal appeal.
Doctor Storm looked at Mr. Haymaker as though he were very sorry for him—an old man long accustomed to his wife’s ways and likely to be made very unhappy by her untimely end; whereas Mr. Haymaker, though staring in an almost sculptural way, was really thinking what a farce it all was, what a dull mixture of error and illusion on the part of all. Here he was, sixty years of age, weary of all this, of life really—a man who had never been really happy in all the time that he had been married; and yet here was his wife, who from conventional reasons believed that he was or should be, and who on account of this was serenely happy herself, or nearly so. And this doctor, who imagined that he was old and weak and therefore in need of this loving woman’s care and sympathy and understanding! Unconsciously he raised a deprecating hand....FROM THE BOOKS.
"After a Shadow, and Other Stories" by T. S. Arthur is a set of sad and notion-upsetting stories that discover the complicated nature of people and society. Arthur paints a photograph of moral dilemmas, emotional struggles, and the consequences of selections on people's lives via a number of gripping testimonies. "After a Shadow," the pick out tale, is a cautionary tale that indicates what occurs while you deliver in to choice. It brings out the ethical complexity of 1's acts and how they will have an effect on others for a long time. Arthur successfully weaves together issues of love, morality, and the complex nature of human relationships at some stage in the collection. Each tale shows a small part of society and deals with problems of morality, private responsibility, and the results of alternatives. The tales in this series make you reflect onconsideration on life in popular, and frequently serve as ethical tales that make you consider the moral issues in society. The deep stories that T. S. Arthur writes take readers into the complicated international of human beings, making them suppose and give them useful statistics about how our choices affect our lives and relationships inside the long term.
"The Horse Stealers and Other Stories" by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is a fascinating series of quick stories that gives a nuanced exploration of human nature and the complexities of Russian society. Originally penned within the past due nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chekhov's narratives continue to resonate with readers for his or her insightful commentary and masterful storytelling. The identify story, "The Horse Stealers," unfolds with a mix of humor and irony, as Chekhov delves into the lives of characters concerned in a reputedly petty crime. Through this tale and others like "Ward No. 6" and "The Petchenyeg," Chekhov skillfully examines the human circumstance, revealing the fragility of sanity, the impact of societal norms, and the effects of moral picks. Chekhov's characters are vividly drawn, representing a pass-section of Russian society, every grappling with personal dilemmas and societal expectations. The collection is characterised by way of its exploration of the mundane and the profound, demonstrating Chekhov's keen know-how of the subtleties of human behavior. "The Horse Stealers and Other Stories" stands as a testament to Chekhov's literary genius, showcasing his potential to seize the complexities of lifestyles in concise but profound narratives. Each tale serves as a window into the human soul, making this collection a long lasting traditional within the realm of quick fiction.
