Stay Up With Me – Tom Barbash

So I’m half way through reading Tom Barbash’s collection of short stories and I really wanted to talk about it. It’s very, very good! Another internship freebie, Stay Up With Me features thirteen short stories about love, loss and trying to connect with the people around us. So far it’s hard to pick a favourite! From the mother interfering in her son’s love life as a consequence of her marriage breakdown in The Break to the pain that the protagonist carries following the death of his brother in Howling at the Moon, this collection is incredibly moving. I finish each story eager for the next, which is definitely the mark of a successful short story collection.

I would highly recommend it.

Stay Up With Me Tom Barbash Simon & Schuster

The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter

Angela Carter is an incredible author, and The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is one of her most interesting works. In this collection of 10 short stories, Carter takes on a number of well-known fairy tales and reimagines them with a feminist slant.

The title story is Carter’s version of Bluebeard’s Castle, in which a young, poor, virgin girl weds the formidable Bluebeard, and is whisked off to his isolated, imposing castle. After disobeying her husband’s request not to explore the locked rooms of the castle, she stumbles upon his secret torture chamber, and learns the fate of both his previous wives and herself.