Best British Short Stories 2016 by Nicholas Royle

Best British Short Stories 2016 Reviews

• 
  JimZ

  Before reading this, I had read 8 of the 11 collections available published from 2011 to 2021, and ratings were mostly 3 (5 of them) with three collections getting 4 stars (2018, 2020 and 2021). I was quite happy with these collections and would look forward to reading the next one that I had lined up in the queue. This was a real letdown therefore. I read the first 5 stories and they were, in my opinion, terrible. This ain’t why I read. Yeesh. Luckily there were several to save the day, but overall the stories were mediocre. Here are the 21 stories and their authors and my ratings.
  
  1. The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant — Leona Ross — 1.5 stars
  2. Arrivals — Robert Sheppard — 1.5 stars
  3. Vain Shadows Flee — Mark Valentine — 1.5 stars
  4. The Politics of Minor Resistance — Jessie Greengrass — 1 star
  5. Walsingham — Trevor Fevin — 1 star
  6. A Belgian Story — Ian Parkinson — 3 stars
  7. Some Versions of Pastoral — DJ Taylor — 2.5 stars
  8. Mrs. Swietokrzyskie’s Castle — Colette Sensier — 4 stars
  9. A Leg to Stand On — Neil Campbell — 1.5 stars
  10. Wyndham Le Strange Buys the School — Alex Preston — 3.5 stars
  11. Song of the River — John Saul — 2 stars
  12. 1961 — Greg Thorpe — 2.5 stars
  13. 1977 — Crista Ermiya — 2.5 stars
  14. The Staring Man — David Gaffney — 3.5 stars
  15. The Bluebell Wood — Tony Peake — 4.5 stars
  16. My Husband Wants to Talk to Me Again — Kate Hendry — 4.5 stars
  17. In Theory, Theories Exist — Graham Mort — 1.5 stars
  18. Control Knobs — Claire-Louise Bennett — 1 star
  19. The Only Thing is Certain Is — Thomas McMullan — 3 stars
  20. Live From the Palladium — Stuart Evers — 2.5 stars
  21. Distance — Janice Galloway — 2.5 stars
  
  Reviews
  
  http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspo...
  
• 
  Alan

  an excellent addition to the series with established writers like Leone Ross, Janice Galloway, Graham Mort and D J Taylor on top form. Also sharp pieces from writers I know like David Gaffney, Stuart Evers and John Saul. Of the unknowns (to me) I really liked the two stories named after years - 1961 and 1977 I think (I haven't got the book with me - will come back and fill in details), the one set in the call centre, the babies are coming! (Shepard), the one with the empty funeral urn (due to the super hot cremation no remains remain) set in the near future (I think), and the meditation on Belling oven control knobs. Excellent, engaging collection.
• 
  Saffron

  A great collection of short stories, there was really only one that I didn't enjoy. Many diverse topics and emotions covered.
  
  My only small issue was with the order of the stories, it would have been nice to finish the book on a high, other than that, good selection of authors and tales.
• 
  Dieuwke

  I immensely enjoyed reading this collection. True, there's always one or two that one doesn't like as much (that whole pilgrimage thing - even after debating, and looking it up online, I still don't understand) but in this case there were four or five at least that were so good I'm actually grateful I've bought the book, so I can reread them as often as I like.
• 
  Lauren McCarthy

  There was not a single story that bored me. I thought they were all beautifully written with well-formed characters and believable plots.
• 
  Jackie Cain

  I don't normally like short stories but I embarked on this collection after my "Start Writing Fiction" course. I was pleasantly surprised by the stories and the experience of reading them. I think I should have a collection on the go to dip into when I don't have long to read and am just in the mood. I think they are more accessible as a learning tool as well. However, after a while I was yearning for the wider engagement of a novel. Collections of short stories have one benefit - if you dislike part of the collection, you just move on to the next. There were some really weird stories in here. The first one, “The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant”, opened that mood very effectively. And some I just didn't get - they didn't go anywhere. Is this the result of so many creative writing courses that just talk about developing a character and leave out plot? I don't know. One story, “Vain Shadows Flee” did that but then knowingly talked about how the ideal end of a story would be a resolution, rather than the uncertainty the author actually provided. Oh, and “A Leg to stand on” tells an incident in the lives of two authors who are also creative writing lecturers which provides amusing commentary on that aspect of modern life, breaking the fourth wall in creative writing perhaps.
  
  My favourite two stories in the book were “Wyndham Le Strange Buys the School”, which has a melancholy theme related to World War One, and “Mrs Świętokrzyskie’s Castle”, which explores some unexpected aspects of on-line gaming. For me, they were worth the purchase of the book but every other reader will probably find her own gems.
  
• 
  Des Lewis

  
  The Staring Man
  DAVID GAFFNEY
  
  “—1958.’
  The couple looked innocently happy, their small trim frames somehow weightless, as if in those days there had been less gravity.”
  
  An utterly moving story. But I am not sure why. A story of a model being modelled, the model maker Charlotte, her explanation of memorialising the Park as it once was, with her models of the people of the times, certain prescriptive rules as to the overall model, and her cameo staring man (like Hitchcock in all of his own films), staring outward or upward as if that made what was within or deeper below better. A belief in God or not. And an old ex teacher of English with a monochrome photo of him and his nuclear family from the days of the park and its paddling pool, or was it a boating lake? I dare not look back at it. We all can float, if we can relax, whatever it is. Let us take what takes us. And take those we can’t leave behind to fend for themselves. Better that the gravity could have taken her (his daughter) back then? My extrapolations from this story, but if you read it you may only be able to read its surface. It takes someone, an old man like me, to create a diversion from its depths. Or point to them disarmingly, more like.
  
  The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
  Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.
• 
  Jennifer

  I don't think there were any duds here, with the probable exception of the introduction by the editor which was weird.
  
  Not a lot of sweetness here (often the way with short stories), but not overly sour either.
  
  
• 
  Holly

  I read this for uni and, yeah, it's not something I would have picked up of my own accord. I thought Wyndham Le Strange Buys The School and 1961 were alright stories but generally I found the stories a bit hard to follow/confusing/jarring so not my cup of tea overall.
• 
  Amalia Gkavea

  I can't really explain except to say that night is my enemy. It's dark and terrible. Night whispers death. Every creature shrinks from it because the dark wants us and we sense it will bite to kill. It will kill if it can. And somewhere this tiny voice I hear is reassuring me. It repeats that night is only a means to morning, and the morning will take away all my terrors and give me fresh hope, if I can get to Walsingham.''
  
  One of the best instalments in the series.
  
  Highlights include:
  
  The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant (Leone Ross): A woman ''haunts'' a restaurant in order to be close to her one true love. Extremely moving and haunting.
  
  The Politics of Minor Resistance (Jessie Greengrass): Working in a job that practically requires you to become a robot, a woman narrates her daily routine in a voice that cries in despair.
  
  Walsingham (Trevor Fevin): Such a mysterious, eerie story...A woman who has experienced abuse is making a pilgrimage to find peace. However, the omens she encounters foretell anything but. A masterpiece that hovers between Gothic terror and Folk horror.
  
  Mrs. Świȩtokrzyskie's Castle (Colette Sensier): A middle-aged woman becomes obsessed with an online RPG game. She falls (in dubious ways) for a man she has never seen and her actions result in strange repercussions for her children. Just how far can loneliness impact the weak-minded?
  
  A Leg to Stand On (Neil Campbell): An academic feud goes horribly awry...
  
  ''We came back as ghosts from the war, haunting the places we once called home, but they had changed utterly, or rather it was that trench foot, trench mouth, the dawn burst of star shells, had changed us. The things we'd seen meant that we could no longer step upon the same blithe pavements, could no longer hold the dry, decisive hands of older girls on summer evenings, could no longer look with the same eyes on the wainscoting and gambling, the ivy, the chimney-topped roofs of our homes. Now we live between London's boarding houses and cafes, her pubs and her parks, striding with collars up through the endless, pitiless rain.''
  
  Wyndham Le Strange Buys the School (Alex Preston): Four veterans of WWI (who might or might not be ghosts...) return to their familiar grounds only to find that the world has changed beyond recognition. An ode to Checkhov and a lament to life.
  
  Song of the River (John Saul): Two young women move in a place near the Thames and we witness their almost whimsical conversations about strange dreams and music.
  
  1961 (Greg Thorpe): A story of identity and stardom, using the icon that was Judy Garland, set in New York.
  
  The Staring Man (David Gaffney): A woman who makes models is visited by a mysterious old man, prompting her to create the figure of a staring man. She can't know that she has found herself a part in a tragic story. A beautiful dance between the supernatural and the real horrors in our lives.
  
  ''From the window at the sink I see blackbirds tapping the soil, early-morning spring thrushes, sheep at the fence. I notice the state of the clouds across the valley. Sounds I've made fill the room - the suck of water as it drains from the sink, mugs on their hooks chiming against each other, the end of conversation.''
  
  My Husband Wants to Talk to Me Again (Kate Hendry): The disintegration of a marriage depicted through an absolute lack of communication.
  
  The Only Thing Is Certain Is (Thomas McMullan): A true masterpiece! A man faces the death of his child and the cruel task of a cremation gone wrong in a city that seems to have succumbed to a strange regime. Is it a hallucination or a coping mechanism?
  
  ''That was what Scottish Islands were, after all: heather and bracken, tumbledown crofts and Highland cows, solitary eagles, hovering over rugged grandeur. And water: streams to waterfalls, crashing waves - a lot of water.''
  
  Distance (Janice Galloway): A mysterious woman, who is clearly facing psychological issues, is almost disappointed when she finds out that her illness is actually curable. A story with a protagonist whose motives are unclear and a highly troubling mother-child relationship.
  
  It is December now. Frost patterns the windows, shimmers on the roofs, making icicles of the towers. The weeds that smashed through the cellar door, that vined their way in through windows and shutters have died, leaving their yellow-brown corpses underfoot. The bats control the towers; further down the moths rustle and birds shriek and creak and cackle. Foxes scarper through the corridors, their swift brushes sweeping trails in the dust. There is an owl in the dormitory sitting watch over me as I sleep. Through the broken windows of the library, snow has blown, and banks up against the armchairs, the mildweed ottoman.''
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Dom Creed

  Finally finished this collection for the next lil bit of my MA module. There were some incredible stories in this collection and wow, were there some bad ones.
  
  Distance by Janice Galloway was absolutely impeccable though and will probs be thinking about it for a v v long time!!
• 
  L

  *Vacation reading requirement, for Semester One*