Pretty Story Bag: 7 Sweet Tales to Carry Along

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The ambassador of a small country spends his final moments of life in conversation with his assassin. An acting coach attempts to create the greatest theater company around, looking to both the actors and the audience.An elderly man moves to a home and realizes it was cursed by the family that lived there previously.

Cheever is known as a chronicler of the suburbs, but in this story the leafy neighbourhood of Shady Hill, a recurring location in his fiction, blends the domestic with something much stranger, almost magical. The story is comic (its title mirrors William Wycherley’s 1675 comedy of manners The Country-Wife), but darker currents work beneath its surface and it builds to a stunning finale that is one of the most rapturous passages Cheever ever wrote. “An Outpost of Progress” by Joseph Conrad (1897) In the midst of a war, the women of a local town abandon their neighborhood only a week before their husbands and sons return. Key to a great short story is the tension and torsion created within each sentence. “Paradise” combines remarkable disquiet, poetry and narrative drive. O’Brien is a phenomenal architect of landscape, both physical and human, imbuing her setting with exact detail, lush discomfort, intrigue and counterintuitive fate. The main character, a nurse, has been taken to the overseas villa of her rich lover. Not only must she learn to swim and entertain his companions, she’s interviewing – without any real prospect – for the position of wife. The story is lit with sexual chemistry, but travels a horribly misaligned path. Its true test lies in finding an exit from the female dream. Sarah Hall “Hands” by Sherwood Anderson (1916) A father and daughter take a hunting trip every year together, but every year they grow farther apart. Although Belly and Cam date throughout the summer, romantic tension between Belly and Conrad grows. At a house party, Conrad becomes aggressive with a young man in his twenties. To prevent them from coming to blows, Belly steps between them to break up the argument. Later, as she sits alone with Conrad in a car, he gently strokes her hair. He is on the verge of saying something to her, but the moment passes.

Part poetic incantation, part eccentric kaleidoscopic vision, this is a story which contorts each time you read it. Born in Antigua, Kincaid invents aesthetics which are wholly unique, transfiguring human form and surroundings, in particular, the Caribbean landscapes. Here, she conveys the multiple textures of smaller islands, creating a literary geography which remains experimental, new and indefinable. Irenosen Okojie “Music at Annahullion” by Eugene McCabe (2004)