Sam Kitchener
A Chill Wind Doth Blow
Something Like Happy
By John Burnside
Jonathan Cape 256pp £16.99
You read a sentence like ‘Eva laughed back, but she wasn’t happy’, and your heart sinks. It appears in ‘The Bell-ringer’, placed about halfway through this, John Burnside’s second collection of short stories. Eva is stuck within, if not a loveless marriage, then a love-light one; her sister-in-law, Martha, has just confessed to having an affair, and Eva disapproves even as she recognises an image of her own sadness. The properly admired short stories of Chekhov and Carver have elevated accounts of this sort of ordinary unhappiness into a high art, but what once felt bracing and democratising easily becomes well worn, and short fictions featuring observant women in stagnant marriages, or physically and emotionally remote communities, begin to stir dark thoughts.
It is a relief, then, that although themes of loneliness and isolation are ever present, this collection isn’t cod dirty realism. There are a number of unhappy marriages, in ‘Slut’s Hair’, ‘Perfect and Private Things’, ‘The Cold Outside’, and ‘The Future of Snow’, most of them set in Burnside’s native
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk