Sam Kitchener

A Chill Wind Doth Blow

Something Like Happy

By

Jonathan Cape 256pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

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.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'To be clever without wanting to glory in it, put dimmer people down or make an act of covering it up (viz Boris Jo… ,
    • 'Her favourite design included a body in the shape of a horse, with a steam engine inside ... The passenger would t… ,
    • Sign up to our email newsletter below! Get free articles, highlights from the archive, and chances to win theatre… ,
    • RT : Founded in 1979, is a trusted independent source for reviews of new books across a variety of genres. A… ,
    • RT : Here we are - "Shelf Indulgence" by Ed Potten, a wonderful read, well worth your time: @Lit_Review,
    • 'Like going to a party hoping to get away as quickly as politeness allowed and at 4am finding myself still engrosse… ,
    • 'Neville never shed his sense of being the junior, and perhaps least-deserving Chamberlain.' From the archive, Mic… ,
    Follow Us