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
‘In matters of the heart, cats are at the heart of the matter.’
So says @OSoden on the explosion of cat mania in the early twentieth century.
Oliver Soden - Pussies Galore
Oliver Soden: Pussies Galore - Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes
literaryreview.co.uk
A recent inquiry found that British security services had effectively licensed the IRA assassin known as Stakeknife to commit multiple murders.
@malodoherty picks apart the murky world of spying and counterespionage in Northern Ireland.
Malachi O’Doherty - Belfast Confidential
Malachi O’Doherty: Belfast Confidential - Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice ...
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Creative non-fiction, I am so sick of this bullshit’, says Michael Anderson, an editor of the New York Times Book Review.
@rosalyster returns to its genesis.
Rosa Lyster - Two Sides to the Story
Rosa Lyster: Two Sides to the Story - The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble Rousers, O...
literaryreview.co.uk