No matter how prepared I think I am, there always seems to be too much to do and too little time in the lead up to Christmas. So it certainly doesn't feel appropriate to be whiling away the hours reading. But I never feel quite right if I haven't got a good book on the go.
So I was pleased to discover that Tessa Hadley's latest book is a novella (see below). I could enjoy the story in one sitting, as a perfect escape on a grey afternoon and found I returned to the Christmas preparations renewed!
It was interesting, then, to read a newspaper article extolling the virtues of short stories, and novellas. The journalist was hoping this might become 'a thing'.
It's commonly accepted that fewer people enjoy short stories than full length novels (in 2020 a YouGov poll found that just 14 per cent of people in the UK declared short stories their favourite form of fiction), but there's a lot to be said for this more concise form, not least the fact that a short story can be enjoyed in a lunch break or a commute, an evening in front of the fire, or in a snatched hour or two between commitments over the festive period itself.
This year there have been a number of novelists publishing short story collections - Elly Griffiths, Lee Child, Stephen King, George Saunders, Eliza Clark, and the interconnected stories of Elizabeth Strout.
We bemoan the short attention span of society generally but there's also something to be celebrated in brevity, and the skill of creating a world in few words. And isn't the winter the perfect time for a short story? What about the extraordinary 'Small Things Like These' by Claire Keegan, the ghost stories of MR James with the wind swirling outside, or Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol', of course. I think I'll be picking up a few more short stories in the next few weeks.
Thank you for reading.