The theme for this small collection of books is slippery. Lucky for us, a colleague here at NYPL already did the research back in 2016, and described this very form we were struggling to name.

Ben Sapadin of Morris Park Library on an elusive genre(?): 

In 1925, the young Ernest Hemingway published his second collection of short stories. While the individual stories were praised, critics seemed baffled by the collection's unique construction—each story is prefaced by a brief, unexplained vignette, while events and characters from one story appear and are referenced again in the next. D.H. Lawrence, reviewing the collection, wrote that, "In Our Time” calls itself a book of stories, but it isn't that. It is a series of successive sketches from a man's life, and makes a fragmentary novel."

Lawrence, in his review, was attempting to define the nebulous nature of what would later be referred to as the short story cycle, the composite novel or, sometimes, a novel in stories. However, it wasn't until 1971 that Lawrence's "fragmentary novel" was redubbed the short story cycle by Forrest L. Ingram and defined by him as "a set of stories so linked to one another that the reader's experience of each one is modified by the experience of the others."

Thanks Ben! And now for some new books we recommend in the form of the Short Story Cycle.

The Dinner Party and Other Stories by Joshua Ferris

This is a straight-up collection of short stories, all previously published in The New Yorker and collected here for reading delight. Ferris’ signature combining of comedy and tragedy, sad stories told with wit and charm. The stories also share a setting, New York City. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

A collection of nine linked stories, each chapter introduces an aging character from the town of Amgash, Illinois, a small rural American town. Resounding themes include poverty, class, shame, secrets, and the trauma that is inflicted in families. It definitely pays homage to Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, a pioneer in the short story cycle genre.

 

 

 

 

Human Acts by Kang Han

This one is as disturbing and heartwrenching as it is beautiful and haunting.  An interconnected group of characters tries to make sense of their experiences in the aftermath of South Korea's 1980 Gwangju Uprising, when student-led demonstrations came to a gruesome end.

 

 

 

 

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

This last one is a bit of a stretch on the theme. It is a novel, but it is told in vignettes. Moments or thoughts or interactions, some a paragraph long, others spanning 2-3 pages, that make up a period in a young woman’s life where she rides a wave of grief though the illness and death of her mother. Similar to what D.H. Lawrence thought about Hemingway's collection: "It is a series of successive sketches from a man's life, and makes a fragmentary novel."