Short Fiction in Theory & Practice - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2020

This article explores three of Agatha Christie’s early non-crime short stories written in the mid-1920s. I examine Christie’s use of symbolism and key motifs to explore the representation of relationships through the prism of romance. I argue that Christie’s short stories serve as a highly significant creative site for her investigation of the relationship between genre, subjectivity and symbolism.

This article incorporates Gerald Prince’s and Caroline Levine’s work on form to reveal some of the innovations in Patrick Gale’s ‘A Slight Chill’ ([1996] 2018). This short story juxtaposes two antagonistic plots: the vampire Lotta Wexel’s gastronomic activities and her teacher Angel Voysey’s romance. By attending to, and drawing connections between, smaller forms (e.g. allusions and metaphors) and larger ones (plots and genre), I argue that we may better understand Gale’s project. Lotta’s plot effectively exposes and frustrates Angel’s. In foregrounding such interactions, he encourages the reader to reassess both the affordances and the inadequacies of the models and expectations that Angel inherits. This article goes on to analyse Gale’s screenplay for his upcoming film adaptation to show how he gives a new application to his earlier project. If the short story is particularly invested in the decisions before Angel, then the screenplay explores, even more so than its source material, how and why we categorize characters into hierarchical forms. This article contributes to knowledge, then, by examining Gale’s writing programme, which has received inadequate scholarly attention; by illuminating some of its complexities; and by demonstrating the value of thinking about the short story in terms of form.

This article examines the tropes of ghosting in Margo Lanagan’s ‘The Point of Roses’ in relation to Judith Butler’s theory of the performative construction of identity through reiteration and foreclosure. The story illustrates the ghosting effect of normative subjectivities and the spectral, disruptive return of the contingent, socially erased subjectivities. Ghosting is considered in the light of the dual nature of the spectral as ‘a dispossessing erasure or disappearance’, and also a ‘powerful ability to rematerialize as a disturbing force’ (Maria del Pilar Blanco and Ester Peeren). In this sense, the ghost is that which is ontologically invisible because of absence/erasure; but which is also visible because it is haunting those who try to erase it. The article examines the role of the uncanny in disrupting the ontological conditions of time, space, character, substance and language. Then, it focuses on the traces of invisibility as signs of erasure and foreclosure that are meant to institute and suture an identity, while relegating other layers of subjectivity to oblivion. Finally, the article studies the disruptive return of the excluded and its dual consequences on the haunted subject, on the one hand by establishing a liminal condition of unknowing and, on the other hand, by opening up to a condition of ‘transformative recognition’ (Avery Gordon).

The purpose of this research is to consider the language used for telling true ghost stories. True ghost stories, that is, those anecdotes initially shared by friends and family describing personal experiences and encounters with paranormal activity, is an unusual genre for storytellers in that it lives within a space that can be seen as both fiction and non-fiction, with specific vocabulary that joins the two genres. The non-fiction part of such a story, as with all non-fiction narratives, relies on the verbatim reporting of an eyewitness account. The fictional part depends on a writer utilizing specific semantic tropes of the ghost story, such as mysterious shadows, unexplained noises and fluctuations in temperature. Bridging these two areas is the language found in the narrative, where a responsible writer employs careful phrasing to relate the story whilst avoiding a vocabulary that endorses unprovable phenomena. For example, I cannot, in good conscience, write: … and then the ghost attacked her. To be honest to my own scepticism, and to the limited evidence usually presented with such stories, I have to write: …and then she claims the ghost attacked her or …and then it appeared the ghost attacked her. Through a critical analysis of existing narratives and an examination of hedging strategies used, this research intends to demonstrate how some writers in this genre maintain their own truthfulness to present a compelling narrative.

Are the unnamed characters who write and respond to these post-it notes flatmates or lovers, friends or acquaintances? Is their relationship as fractious as this prose suggests, or does each note hold something deeper, a series of signs and indicators that gradually reveal affection between the two characters? The medium, somewhat outdated in our digital world, suggests fleeting exchanges, ships that pass in the night, all the while signalling shared space, shared responsibilities and shared lives. The implied story is as complex as the reader wants to make it, as the authors themselves use this brief epistolary form as a prompt for contemplating the mundanity of relationships, the emotional manoeuvring, assumed subtexts and back-stories of each and every moment or event. The authors are a novelist and a poet, writers each involved in their own relationships, colleagues interested in collaboration and new forms. Who is the third voice (or third and fourth voices) this dialogue has created? The story has led Lilwall and Loydell to writing the unexpected, responding to each other’s prose and shopping items in turn, surprising each other and themselves, before refining and editing the work together.

Review of: Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story, Barbara Korte and Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez (eds) (2019)

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 289 pp.,

ISBN 978-3-030-30358-7, h/bk, £89.99