A review by arirang
Best British Short Stories 2019 by Sally Jubb, Elizabeth Baines, Kieran Devaney, Naomi Booth, Melissa Wan, Robert Mason, Ren Watson, Nigel Humphreys, Ann Quin, Sam Thompson, Vicky Grut, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Nicholas Royle, Julia Armfield
3.0
This is the 11th edition of the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle - no not that [a:Nicholas Royle|6922827|Nicholas Royle|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], but this [a:Nicholas Royle|20435|Nicholas Royle|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png], and indeed the other Nicholas Royle built a highly-inventive novel around the confusion: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2106688465 - and published by the wonderful Salt Publishing.
The collection comes with an interesting introduction from Royle, which gives a great overview of the wider short story scene in the UK in 2018. Indeed so wide is his overview that perhaps the one negative is that the stories actually featured here get a little lost in the many mentioned, and some of the most intriguing sounding stories (e.g. Your Neighbour's Packages by Megan Taylor) don't feature.
Date aside, the collection very much passes the Ronseal test: all the stories are of a consistently good quality. It is difficult to pick any particular standouts although I did particularly enjoy John Lanchester's satire of reality shows, Reality (much more than his novel The Wall), the brilliant Vesna Main contributes the shortest (2 pages) story but one of the most powerful, the inclusion of one of Ann Quin's oeuvre is great to see, Sam Thompson's The Height of Sleep was nicely literary, and Robert Mason's Curtilage a satisfyingly disturbing take on house viewing.
3.5 stars - rounded to 3 more because I am not a huge fan of the form, and if there was a gap it was perhaps some of the more cutting-edge innovative short stories (e.g. Eley Williams, David Hayden etc).
The collection comes with an interesting introduction from Royle, which gives a great overview of the wider short story scene in the UK in 2018. Indeed so wide is his overview that perhaps the one negative is that the stories actually featured here get a little lost in the many mentioned, and some of the most intriguing sounding stories (e.g. Your Neighbour's Packages by Megan Taylor) don't feature.
Date aside, the collection very much passes the Ronseal test: all the stories are of a consistently good quality. It is difficult to pick any particular standouts although I did particularly enjoy John Lanchester's satire of reality shows, Reality (much more than his novel The Wall), the brilliant Vesna Main contributes the shortest (2 pages) story but one of the most powerful, the inclusion of one of Ann Quin's oeuvre is great to see, Sam Thompson's The Height of Sleep was nicely literary, and Robert Mason's Curtilage a satisfyingly disturbing take on house viewing.
3.5 stars - rounded to 3 more because I am not a huge fan of the form, and if there was a gap it was perhaps some of the more cutting-edge innovative short stories (e.g. Eley Williams, David Hayden etc).