"Bath Short Story Award 2015" (Brown Dog Books, 2015)

Stories by Angela Readman, KM Elkes, etc selected from 1003 entries. When Louise Erdrich selected anonymised stories for "The Best American Short Stories (1993)" she chose twice as many females as males. The following year Tobias Wolff selected from the anonymised stories and chose about twice as many male authors as female. Here 15 of the 20 stories are by females). That said, many of the pieces here written by females are from a male PoV.

The judge, Carrie Kania, wrote "I can't help but remark on the themes of the shortlist: love, death, and growing up. Sometimes all three, often two, always at least one."

• "That summer" - Events one hot summer in 80s Northern Island are seen through an adolescent boy's eyes. He doesn't understand it all. A 33 year old woman who the narrator had briefly spied topless, and whose chainbelt he'd picked up dies in suspicious circumstances - it's a protestant part of NI. The story's rich with incidental detail, though the use of "tardiness" seems odd.
• "Dancing to the shipping forecast" - It's stormy by the sea. 3 months after the death of a partner who the narrator had met only 6 months ago, the narrator's in a house belonging to the lover's family, who are wondering when the house will be vacated. The narrator walks the dog, throws a present s/he'd been given ("a small cloth-covered box" probably with a "shiny thing" inside). A ring? The tide returns it to their feet. I don't see much to the story.
• "The woman of letters" - A women writes love letters for the illiterate woman in her village. They want to marry rich foreigners. She lies about what the replies say, acting as advisor as well as scribe. She thinks her own husband left her to marry a Russian. Their son Robin remains unmarried - not much of a catch but she has plans. The story ends with "One day, that's all we are waiting for: Lily, Robin, and I. We wait for one dream to be fulfilled, be watered down, break, so another can begin".
• "The three kings" - 3 mates are out for the night. A lesson's learnt.
• "Last rites" - An ill 88 year-old woman, 48 years a widow, hears her daughters downstairs. She doesn't expect to see them after tonight. She thinks back decades to a lover in Varanasi, where she saw a ritual involving an old woman's corpse. Her daughters say she should go to a home. Next morning she leaves for Varanasi, a trip she'd been secretly planning. She expects to die there within days.
• "Hummingbird heart" - A (sort-of?) doctor on yet another night shift befriends a dying old woman. The man's way of life is portrayed well.
• "The she-wolves" - This feels more literary than many of the other pieces. Hints of fable. A husband/father disappears in a Russian winter. His wife says he's gone to Moscow. People find his hat in the forest, and assume he's been eaten by wolves. At the end, wife and daughter howl.
• "Lilith" - Another rather literary piece. Women are taken advantage of by the shady men of the town. Should they be submissive? It's claimed the men go to Cuba "once a month, when they're doing whatever they do there ..." harvesting the next crop of girls.
• "Boy uncharted" - a sensitive young boy (living in France?) has an alcoholic mother and absent father. He tells a classmate his father works on the canals of Mars, the red planet. His mother tells him his father was a matador. There's a picture of a matador in their house - red and gold suit, red blood. At the end her mother's late home. She has several (paying?) lovers. Style-wise, my favourite so far.
• "The ends of the Earth" - A mother's father pays to take her, her sister, and their boys to see the Northern Lights. After business trips abroad that took ever longer, her husband's effectively left her. It was gradual. Her sister asks if she's ever sensed that there's another life she should have lived. When she sees the lights she thinks "This is it; the threshold, the border between this world and the unknown ...I am here, where I should be, fully present in this version of now".
• "Ruby Shoesmith, click, click, click" - Each section begins with 1 of 10 words from a spelling test. They spark off meanings for the girl who's the narrator. She's living with her grandparents, her mother gone away to be an artist. It's a worthwhile form, but there's not enough content for me.
• "The witching hour" - A witch lurks outside a couple's house, scratching at the windows. The husband (with a history of having affairs) is unconcerned. They go to a party and meet Emily who he seems to fancy. In bed that night he wants her to say "I'm Emily" as they have sex. After, one night when he's late (at Emily's?), she kills the witch with an ax and burns it in the Aga. When he finally returns she says "Everything's going to be fine".
• "Sand" - A few people are jeeped through a desert past corpses, in and out of prison, then driven to the coast to board an overloaded dingy. Illegal migration I guess. Excellently written.
• "Cargo" - Rob works in a film distribution warehouse. He likes working late, getting used to navigating into bed, quietly in the dark so as not to wake Susan, sticking to his side. She makes documentaries, hoping that the next will be about Carlo Cults. Even after she's left him he navigates carefully in the dark. I think there are too few surprises - the final one's telegraphed.
• "Mosquito press" - A reporter and a photographer have a drink in a seedy bar. The reporter feels guilty about an atrocity they witnessed in Phnom Penh: the two of them could have helped - instead they got a story out of it. The piece sounds too much like a first chapter, though I like the writing.
• "Big and brie" - A couple who aren't bright want to have a child and keep it. The story's from the man's PoV. I think it works well, though it's not much of a story per se.
• "The quiet numb of nothing" - A deaf third-world fruit-picker girl who'd been raped by some village boys months ago begins to be help by a women. It's from the picker's PoV - "My first day will be my last when she realises the badness I bring, and I 'll go back to the hut making smoke on the way with my toes" ... "I curl myself up and press my hand to my stomach where the thing hoofs through my inside water. it sends the taste of metal into my mouth. I rub at the stretch of scar in front of my left ear where Lion Boy hunted me the last time".
• "Ruby slippers" - A man puts his wife's red trainers by her hospital bed. Colon cancer. They joke about her recovering to do another marathon. After her death he takes the trainers with him wherever he go - to bed, etc.
• "Death in the nest" - A father whose wife is dying gives an orphaned nestling to their little daughter who seems to be kept away from her mother's ordeal. The girl cares for it, feeding it worms. On the day it's released, the mother dies.
• "Lips" - A couple meet monthly in a cafe. We see things from the quirky male's PoV. He adds a word to his diary after each meeting. Sometimes she does too. It takes over 8 years for his parting kiss on the cheek to become a kiss on the lips. He doesn't want to rush things. In that time she's married, had a child, separated, etc.

Other reviews

• Debbi Voisey (My favourite story, Dan Powell’s ‘Dancing to the Shipping Forecast’)