IN PARENTHESIS

Continuing their mission to bring short fiction readers and writers together, Manchester-based publishers Comma Press are launching a new collection, Bracket – A New Generation in Fiction. You might not need Bracket’s ‘No Introduction’ to tell you why you should value short stories, but there is something appealing about how Ra Page sets the scene: ‘Where a novel is a high walled country retreat of an art-form – built for families, ensemble casts and unfolding personal histories,’ he explains, ‘the short story [...] is a hotel room, occupied by the ubiquitous urban oddity, the individual.’ What comes next is an agreeably accomplished collection populated, as promised, by some intriguing characters. Jaime Campbell’s opening story ‘The Removal’ has a distinctive jerky tone that perfectly suits the tale of a man hauling a mattress down the street in the rain, in the name of failed love. This is followed by Sarah Tierney’s ‘Five Miles Out’, which in contrast has a smooth, slightly removed style perfectly suiting her protagonist’s state.

In ‘Ramshackle’, Zoe Lambert’s hearing-impaired protagonist finds herself an outsider even from her own attempt to be outside of her self, and in Maria Roberts’ ‘When Silence is the Only Thing We Leave Behind’, the writer’s colloquial, sharp-witted style shifts the reader subtly towards a moving tale of grief, expertly told.