Status Updates From Sudden Fiction Internationa...

The Grass-Eaters - Krishnan Varma - India


It started well, not cheery but well written and interesting, and then it was almost as if, as the character descended into madness, the writing changed also, and became disoriented. The chronology sort of slid, and the narrative became less cohesive as it became bleaker. I presume it was intentional and it was interesting.

Blue - David Brooks - Australia

This opened like the beginning of a horror story and could have gone either way until quite close to the end, but there, it ended quite beautifully.

The Weather in San Francisco - Richard Brautigan - United States

(I am slightly disappointed to have a number of stories from the same country so far, I'd have preferred just one from each country to fit more nations in).

That one was kind of sweet, but also very odd, I didn't think bees would eat raw liver? Wasps perhaps, but bees?

The Boy - Joyce Carol Oates - United States

That was just horrible.

Welcoming the Board of Directors - Peter Handke - Austria

That was weird, repetitive, and depressing. It also lacked a satisfactory ending.

One of These Days - Gabriel García Márquez - Colombia

The story of a dentist who pulls a tooth for the he mayor. Not all of the description seemed required and it felt like it was missing a bit of backstory. This one felt more like an extract, rather than a complete story.

Homage for Isaac Babel - Doris Lessing - England/Zimbabwe

The narrator takes their son's young friend to visit him at his school.

The Elephant - Slawomir Mrożek - Poland

It started well, good description, the middle section, again, was well written, but the ending felt rushed and disconnected from the rest, which is a shame. And with loose ends. I'd have preferred to have seen what happened to the director.

August 25, 1983 - Jorge Luis Borges - Argentina

A man dreams of his older self committing suicide, or does he dream of telling his younger self what he's doing? It doesn't say when this one was written, so I'm not sure which viewpoint was closest at the time.

The Laugher - Heinrich Böll - Germany.

A sweet, though slightly sad, monologue by a man whose profession is to laugh.

Love, Your Only Mother - David Michael Kaplan - United States

Bit weird and open ended with no satisfying denouement, verging on the opening of a horror story, but from what seemed a sweet beginning.

House Opposite - R K Narayan - India

I quite liked this one. A holy man lives near a lady of ill-repute and without ever interacting with her, he forms his opinions, and then, as he is leaving, they have a brief interaction which restores his equilibrium.

Really cleverly done.

An Insolvable Problem of Genetics - Josef Škvorecký - Czechoslovakia.

The narrator's older brother has a girlfriend. The narrative suggests that the narrator is young, although the writing and word choices do not.

If I'm honest, I didn't enjoy this one.

La Volpaia - Mark Helprin

An Italian man is sat on a train when a rather aggressive priest comes in. They row. There appears to be no reason for this row, from either side, and the story ends as oddly, and abruptly, as it began.

I can't say I enjoyed it, but it's cleverly written and definitely creates emotions from the reader.

The Other Wife - Colette - France - story 10.

A conversation over lunch, perhaps an unreliable narrator, an open ending...

Girl - Jamaica Kincaid - Antigua

It's astounding how much hatred you can feel about someone that isn't described in just two pages. Cleverly done.