The Fiction Shelf

A rookie rock and roll journalist senses his big break when he gets granted a rare audience with a reclusive rock legend. A classy short story that is as much about getting old as it is about rock and roll.

With speech that is at once engaging and familiar, and a steady, dramatic narrative, Belldown explores long‐established family dynamics and the effect they have on external relationships. The narrative voice expresses fluently a filial struggle that often lays unsaid.

America is in depression and its small towns and working families are struggling. This story’s dialogue is local and its characters are troubled. A childhood lived in an adult world is the difficult backdrop for this engrossing period tale.

A short image with an inconsequential end that reflects the futility of the situation. The honest talk reads like an open‐ended discussion on violence and sex. The untempered language tells effectively of an unremarkable happening in an average setting. Effective and brutal.

Childish absent‐mindedness and the lack of a reason, incomprehensible to adult ears, form the basis of this oddly‐touching and humorous short story. A quirky tale whose peculiar subject is matched with an out‐the‐ordinary narrative that remains engaging and entertaining.

A short, deeply pensive exploration of the self and how an individual perceives it. The prose, complex by their brevity, are steeped with meaning so that the piece feels almost poetic.

A wonderfully‐paced, funny and insightful story about a mother getting to grips with her son’s impending marriage. Family Stone is warm and engaging and deals with familiar issues without ever seeming trite.

A short piece which is whimsical, comic and tragic. The mundane notions of vanity are presented before an impending horror of conflict with prose that are simple and wholly enjoyable to read.

Ostensibly a comedy that finds humour in the brief moments of light in a working day, but, like all good comedy, there is a twinge of tragedy in this sensitively‐crafted and wholly‐enjoyable work about a regular visitor to a coffee shop.

Beginning with a charming return to a childhood in an America where “Disney meant Disney” and kids feasted on Goobers, Chuckles and SkyBars while waiting for the next Big War, this dry‐witted and engaging story goes on to chart a man’s life and his constant struggle with Luck.