Stories for wintry nights
I find wintry nights are more conducive to a tougher read than the easy going page-turners I like to dive into over the summer.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
This time of year I’m more than happy to stay in, and when I’m not bingeing a boxset, I go to bed early to read. It’s a good time of year to tackle some of the TBRs hanging around and any newly gifted books for Christmas. I find wintry nights are more conducive to a tougher read than the easy going page-turners I like to dive into over the summer.
Here’s a few cool suggestions…
Forty Stories by Anton Chekhov
Reading Chekhov is instantly going to make you feel brainy. There’s something about the Russian literary greats - Tolstoy, Chekhov, Golgol that carry that weight of literary approval.
These 40 short stories contain many masterpieces (in my view) and are both an easy and satisfying read. You can dip into the collection and each story can be read in one sitting so perfect for a snatched half-hour on Saturday afternoon or before bed.
Chekhov is a brilliant observer and his stories recount events - a man’s troubled affair, a soldier’s guilt. They’re open-ended and not tidy little stories with clever twists.
Chris Power’s introduction to Chekhov is summarised much more eloquently and efficiently than I can:
‘his stories are discrete totalities, entirely defined by subject and context. Their styles conform to character and event, rather than character and event conforming to a single style.’
One of my favourite stories is ‘The Lady with the Pet Dog’ which is a story that never seems to end. Everytime you think it’s going to end, something else happens giving the feeling of the story continuing and carrying on way beyond the final sentence.
If you enjoy Chekhov and want to know more about the technique I recommend George Saunders - A Swim in the Pond in The Rain - he breaks down the stories to a sentence level and gives one of the best analysis of Russian short stories out there. Particularly enjoyable is his fine-tooth analysis of The Cart by Anton Chekhov.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
‘Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed’
This drug induced, funny, bitchy novel is a perfect wintry read. It’s a brilliant example of novel with a complicated and unlikeable character. We are taken into her world and often it’s uncomfortable world to inhabit.
‘I’d always loved sleeping. It was one thing my mother and I had enjoyed doing together when I was a child… We got along best when we were asleep.’
Moshfegh is such a highly skilled and brilliant writer and there’s not many page-turners about people sleeping in drug induced states.
Weather by Jenny Offill
This has nothing to do with winter but I just loved this book and if you’re after something a bit different and more experimental it’s a great pick. Lizzie is a librarian and overwhelmed by life when she starts working as a community manager for an apocalyptic podcast. Here’s another character who takes trips to bodegas. Jenny Offill spotlights the everyday and Weather cleverly deals with the interior world of Lizzie - how she reacts to family and working life, and the mundane day-to-day against a backdrop of global and climate crisis.
‘My brother told me once that he missed drugs because they made the world stop calling to him. Fair enough, I said. We were at the supermarket. All around us things tried to announce their true nature. But their radiance was faint and fainter still beneath the terrible music.’
It’s an intense read and written in a fragmentary and experimental way.
Antarctica by Claire Keegan
The first short story collection by the incredible Claire Keegan. These stories are intense and dark and much shorter than her well known novella Small Things LIke These. All the stories are engaging and precise and Keegan is so brilliant at observations and small details. The opening creepy story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind - to sleep with another man - sets the tone for this chilly collection.