Nicholas Royle

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Biographical note:  Nicholas Royle was born in Manchester in 1963. He is the author of five novels – Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart and The Director’s Cut, and a short story collection, Mortality. He has edited thirteen anthologies including A Book of Two Halves, The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers’ Dreams, The Ex Files and two volumes of Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing. He lives in Manchester with his wife and two children and teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781907773129
ISBN:  9781907773129
Author:  Nicholas Royle
Title:  The Best British Short Stories 2011
Series:  Anthologies and Gift Books
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  FA
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  03-May-11
Extent:  240pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  14 mm
Weight:  360 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 16.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  

Main description:  Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume. Neither genre nor Granta shall be overlooked in the search for the very best new short fiction.

The first book of the series includes stories published in 2010 by the following authors: David Rose, Hilary Mantel, Lee Rourke, Leone Ross, Claire Massey, Christopher Burns, Adam Marek, SJ Butler, Heather Leach, Alan Beard, Kirsty Logan, Philip Langeskov, Bernie McGill, John Burnside, Robert Edric, Michèle Roberts, Dai Vaughan, Alison Moore and Salley Vickers.

Table of contents:
Flora – David Rose
Winter Break – Hilary Mantel
Emergency Exit – Lee Rourke
Love Silk Food – Leone Ross
Feather Girls – Claire Massey
Foreigner – Christopher Burns
Dinner of the Dead Alumni – Adam Marek
The Swimmer – SJ Butler
So Much Time in a Life – Heather Leach
Staff Development – Alan Beard
The Rental Heart – Kirsty Logan
Notes on a Love Story – Philip Langeskov
No Angel – Bernie McGill
Slut’s Hair – John Burnside
Comma – Hilary Mantel
Moving Day – Robert Edric
Tristram and Isolde – Michèle Roberts
Looted – Dai Vaughan
When the Door Closed, It Was Dark – Alison Moore
Epiphany – Salley Vickers

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Excerpt from book:  

Introduction

We may be living through hard times – for the arts, for anyone relying on any kind of subsidy or support, for everybody really – but there have been harder times for the short story. If I had a pound for every time a writer has complained to me that there is nowhere to send their stories, I’d have enough money to start a new magazine. But in fact there are numerous magazines that regularly publish new short fiction, from literary journals such as the London Magazine, Ambit and the Warwick Review to newsstand titles including Prospect, The Liberal and the Sunday Times Magazine.

Admittedly, most major publishers show very little enthusiasm for the form: some grudgingly allow their more established authors to slip in a collection with their new novel when agreeing a deal, but very few, any longer, will entertain the idea of an anthology of stories by various authors. Faber and Faber will still occasionally launch an author, such as Clare Wigfall in 2007, with a short story collection, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Even more exceptional is Manchester-based Comma Press, a short story specialist, which publishes collections and anthologies with imagination, flair and northern grit. Salt, too, the publisher of the present volume, supports short story writers by continuing to publish collections, and Tindal Street Press, which grew out of a regular gathering of short story writers, the Tindal Street Fiction Group, remains true to its roots.

In genre publishing, the short story retains favoured status. Editors and publishers such as Stephen Jones, Constable and Robinson, Ellen Datlow, Maxim Jakubowski, Peter Crowther/PS Publishing, Andy Cox/TTA Press and others work tirelessly to meet a demand for high-quality short horror, crime, fantasy and science fiction.

There are numerous competitions and prizes, so many in fact that an anthology such as this could easily fill its pages by cherry-picking from the shortlists of these prizes, such as the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize among others. I made sure to read a number of prize-winning stories while working on the selections for this book. One of them struck me as being very nice, very carefully written, but very English, very restrained and reticent. I kept wanting it to reveal itself, to make a run for it, but it kept holding itself in reserve, saving itself. The reveal, when it came, was so timid, so buttoned up, there was a temptation to think, ‘Why bother?’ All that effort for so little reward.

It’s why short stories so often get short shrift from readers, and, consequently, from publishers. Many have little point to them. Picture a figure – a featureless man or woman – standing on a path in a nondescript landscape, the middle of nowhere. The figure starts walking, continues to walk for a bit and then stops. The story ends. The view has barely changed from the walk’s starting point. I want my walker to get into difficulty, perhaps face a parting of the ways, speed up, slow down, run for a bit, get out of breath, maybe have to get down on all fours to advance. In front of him or her is a forever retreating summit and beyond that a view we can only imagine until we get there. It may be an epiphany, or a change of heart, or pace or tone; a twist, perhaps, a revelation that calls into question everything that came before. It could be anything, but there’s got to be something.

The best stories take you somewhere new, somewhere different, or they take you somewhere you might have been before but by a different route. They help you see the world afresh. They wake you up and make you dream, both at the same time.

I’d rather be left with questions than answers. With a vague feeling of uncertainty rather than one of satisfaction at how neatly everything has been tied up. I’d like the story not to be completely done with in the ten or twenty minutes it takes me to read it. I’d like it to have insinuated itself into my head and taken up residence there for the rest of the day with its questions, its ambiguities. I’d like to find myself remembering it at odd times and wondering whether what I’m remembering is a dream or something that happened before remembering that what I’m remembering is a story.

Having said which, I do want a story to finish, not just to end. Or I want it not just to finish, but to have an ending.

Unpublished endorsement:  An assiduous champion of the short story

Laurence Phelan
Independent on Sunday

Unpublished endorsement:  Some pairings can be relied upon – literature and life, Steptoe and Son, Lennon and McCartney, Nicholas Royle and a good anthology

Andrew O'Hagan

Review quote:  Slip this lightweight but nourishing anthology into your holiday bag. Editor Royle has selected 20 published stories from British writers. His own (excellent) taste means that little explosions of weirdness or transcendence often erupt amid much well-observed everyday life.

Boyd Tonkin
The Independent

Review quote:  It's so good that it's hard to believe that there was no equivalent during the 17 years since Giles Gordon and David Hughes's Best English Short Stories ceased publication in 1994. The first selection makes a very good beginning … Highly Recommended.

Kate Saunders
The Times

Review quote:  The collection illustrates just how vibrant and varied the UK short story writing scene is at the moment, although the inclusions are limited to “proper” short stories and flash or micro fiction doesn’t get a look-in, which is a slight shame. Still, each is well crafted and there’s much breadth in terms of style, tone and theme – running from love to war and covering everything in between.

Sarah-Clare Conlon
Bookmunch