Short Reads June 2024

Hello, welcome to the first of a new monthly series which will highlight some of the short stories and flash fictions I’ve been reading that have really stood out for me. There are also writing prompts inspired by the readings.

Colorín Colorado by Camille Bordas

This is a long short story, which are the ones I seem to enjoy more and more lately. After many years of either reading novels or flash fictions, my reading tastes are changing and I’m finding myself drawn to stories longer than flash and shorter than novels or novellas. Although I am still reading them too!

What I love about this story is the layers within layers within layers of it. The links between each section of the plotless stories; the deaths of people the protagonist knew, both of whom had sent her life in a different direction; using the story to show the reader how to do something.

The central question of what the reader wants to hear, that is posed right at the start stayed in my mind all the way through. It felt like I needed to hear what the protagonist was telling me because she needed to tell me, whether I wanted to hear it felt like a redundant question. Structurally, each section can be read as a standalone story and still resonate.

You can read it here in The New Yorker.

Writing prompt: write a story in which the protagonist is remembering a person who made them change their life in some way.

Girls, at Play by Celeste Ng

This is so sad and such a chilling look at the ways adolescent girls respond to the pressures of growing up. The use of the plural first person point of view for the three girls contrasts so well against the singularity of Grace. The fact that the ‘we’ voice never wavers from that group consciousness adds such a layer of poignance as they strive to recapture their innocence through Grace, as if she can become another extension of the ‘we’ and has no thoughts and desires of her own.

You can read it here in Bellevue Literary Review

Writing prompt: write a story using the plural first person point of view.

Roaring Twenties by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

I love the breathlessness of this one paragraph story and how it perfectly captures the hedonism and emptiness of the protagonist’s young adult days. The title is brilliant and I like how it references a time in history as well as this girl’s personal history. Fantastic imagery and sensory details so that the night comes alive in sounds, smells and tastes. The repetition in the ending works so well to give us an insight into the narrator’s state of mind.

You can read it here in New Flash Fiction Review

Writing prompt: write a story set on a single night.

That’s it for the June Short Reads. I’ll be back with another selection in July.

I hope you enjoyed the stories and created something new from the prompts.

With love,