I used to say I hated short stories. They never quite felt satisfying enough for me. Just as you start to get into the characters, the story comes to an end. Then a friend who knew I was reading Catcher in the Rye gave me For Esme with Love and Squalor, a book of Salinger's short stories, which totally changed my mind, and made me realise what I'd been missing out on all this time. Good short stories are a bit like dreams, I think. They take you into a world for a time and then you wake up and you're out, but you retain feelings, impressions, memories. There's something a bit more ephemeral about them that appeals to me, and sometimes makes them more powerful. Plus they're great for reading just before bed.
Julie Orringer was a tip from my mother-in-law, and How to Breathe Underwater did not disappoint. There is something so sweetly intimate, confessional and beautiful about these stories that makes them feel like a gift. There's a certain mood, a tone that I can't quite work out how to describe except perhaps to say there's a girl who takes photographs I know from flickr called Margaret Durow. I love her work, and I think has something of the same quality as these stories. There's a lightness to it, the sense of a passing moment captured, and a vulnerability, yet also something vivid and real, and brilliant. One to enjoy.
