Tag: Ockham shortlist

All Her Lives – book review

All Her Lives, by Ingrid Horrocks

Ingrid Horrocks’ book, All her Lives, currently shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction (UPDATE – yay!! She won!!), contains nine short stories of women across different generations. The stories span from a tenacious woman chasing stolen silver on the Norwegian coast in 1795 via a Berlin nightclub in 2005 to a woman who visits her son in prison, today. The stories are elegantly constructed, totally different but all the same, each telling of a woman negotiating her place to stand amongst the men around her. If you’re looking for the voice of the Universal Woman she’s here, in these collected works, in a consideration that runs through all these lives like a subcutaneous layer of fat. Simply: How do I, as a woman, negotiate communication with men?

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Pretty Ugly – book review

Pretty Ugly, by Kirsty Gunn

On the strength of this book I am going to build a new bookshelf in the spare bedroom, just for short stories. For guests who stay a couple of nights and might otherwise run off with an unputdownable novel. Let them fill their early mornings or sleepless nights with Kirsty Gunn. That’s what short stories are for; they’re probably not designed to be consumed all at once like I did these. I couldn’t help it. These short stories are terrific.

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