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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Analysis
“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez is sometimes subtitled “A tale for children”. This short story reminded me of middle grade novel Skellig by British author David Almond. Sure enough, Almond has said in interview that he was influenced by the 1960 Colombian short story, and others have […]
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Cortes Island by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Cortes Island” is a short story by Alice Munro, included in the 2013 collection The Love Of A Good Woman, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Like another story in this collection, “Jakarta“, the title of this story is set in a place away from where the action takes place. Writers often say that […]
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Jakarta by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Jakarta” is a short story by Alice Munro, the second in the Nobel Prize winning collection The Love Of A Good Woman (1998). At first it baffles me why this story is called Jakarta as it is not set in Indonesia. Eventually we find out that one of the characters has previously died in Jakarta […]
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The Lumber-Room by Saki Short Story Analysis
“The Lumber-Room” by H.H. Monro (Saki) is one of the short stories from Beasts and Super-Beasts, published 1914, though it was first published in a newspaper. He died two years later in the war. Significantly for this short story, Saki was gay. There’s something very Peter Rabbit about this short story for adults. Peter Rabbit […]
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Save The Reaper by Alice Munro Analysis
“Save The Reaper” (1998) is a short story by Alice Munro, included in the collection For The Love Of A Good Woman. This story is a re-visioned homage to Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find“. THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN (1998) The night before reading “Save The Reaper” I happened to watch […]
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A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor Short Story Analysis
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is a well-known short story by American writer Flannery O’Connor, published 1953. So much has already been said about this story — I will look into its structure from a plotting point of view. It’s also about time I read this story. Without reading Flannery O’Connor’s most famous […]
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The She-Wolf by Saki Analysis
“The She-Wolf” is a comedic short story by Saki. The story first appeared in the Morning Post newspaper. It was later collected in the 1914 anthology Beasts and Super-Beasts. Clovis the prankster gets up to tricks. This is a twist on the transgression comedy. In order to write a story like this, the writer must embody the prankster. […]
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The Love Of A Good Woman by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“The Love Of A Good Woman” by Alice Munro is the title story in the collection which won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2013. It’s a long short story — about 70 pages. We might even call it a novella, though let’s just go with this: The title story of Alice Munro’s collection, The Love […]
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Court In The West Eighties by Carson McCullers Analysis
Have you ever lived in close quarters with strangers? Perhaps you went out of your way not to know these people, but in the name of etiquette rather than aloofness. There’s something discomfiting about living in a stranger’s pocket. Like commuters on a packed train, we avoid each other’s gaze. Failure to know our neighbours […]
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A Country Where You Once Lived by Robin Black Analysis
“A Country Where You Once Lived” by Robin Black (2010) is a great example of a short story in which the present story plays out alongside the backstory of a stand-out inflection point (“fulcrum”) which happened 13 years earlier. Two separate time periods merge into one. Whenever this happens in a story we are reminded […]
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Pine a Short Story by Robin Black Analysis
“Pine” is a short story from a collection called If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This published 2010, written by Robin Black. This is a wonderful example of a contemporary story loosely based on an old fairytale—this time it’s Bluebeard. “Pine” is also an excellent example of a story which centres a homophone […]