Tag: shortstories

Book Blitz: Skyline by William Fowkes

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Today’s spotlight is on Skyline: Tales of Manhattan by William Fowkes, a fascinating collection of short stories focusing on the lives of some of the residents of Manhattan.

SkylineAbout the Book

In Skyline: Tales of Manhattan, award-winning playwright and author William Fowkes presents stories of New Yorkers – gay, straight, and confused – making startling connections and discoveries. On the West Side, a man approaching his 60th birthday tries a new haircut, with disastrous consequences. On the East Side, a Park Avenue Republican gets a taste of life on the “down low” in Central Park. In the East Village, a struggling writer papers his kitchen wall with rejection letters. In SoHo, a graphic designer takes drastic steps to get the attention of her editor. At MOMA, a woman physically attacks a man examining a sculpture she doesn’t like. Downtown, a transplanted New Orleans cabaret singer deals with life and love in the aftermath of 9/11. There are 19 stories in all—enough to demonstrate that Manhattan’s residents are just as striking as the city’s celebrated skyline.

Fmat: ebook Publisher: Ivor Publishing Pages:
Publication: 1st March 2016 Genre: Short Story

Purchase Links*
IndieBound ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Barnes & Noble 
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Skyline: Tales of Manhattan on Goodreads

WilliamFowkesAbout the Author

William Fowkes is a playwright and author based in Manhattan and Connecticut. His short fiction has been published in many literary journals. His plays have been presented in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Several have been broadcast on the radio. His full-length plays include All in the Faculty (Dramatists Play Service), Sunshine Quest (Fresh Fruit Festival), Private Property (The Players Ring), The Best Place We’ve Ever Lived (Love Creek Productions), Couple of the Century (Downtown Urban Theater Festival), The German Lesson (Great Plains Theatre Conference Playlabs) and others. His short plays include The Dakota (Best Short Play, Downtown Urban Theater Festival), The Brazilian Dilemma (First Prize, McLean Drama Company; film version by Collective NY Films), The Next Move (Best New One-Act Play, Brevard Theater), The Session (Pushcart Prize Nominee), Table Manners in Chicagoland (Winner, Nor’Eastern Play Writing Contest), An Accident in the Park (William Inge Theatre Festival), A Remarkable Man (Gallery Players, Brooklyn) and others. He has been a finalist for the Reva Shiner Comedy Award (Bloomington Playwrights Project) and the W. Keith Hedrick Playwriting Contest (HRC Showcase Theatre) and a semi-finalist for the Playwrights First Award (National Arts Club), the Promising Playwright Award (Colonial Players, MD) and the Princess Grace Playwriting Award. He is a graduate of Yale University and Northwestern University (M.A., PhD) and a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Pulse Ensemble Theatre Playwrights’ Lab. He was formerly a philosophy professor and a marketing executive at several media companies, including Showtime and HBO. He is married to Stephen Michael Smith, a music conductor. His daughters, Laura and Julia, work in the fashion industry in New York City.

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Book Review: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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TheYellowWall-PaperAbout the Book

First published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity. In the involuntary confinement of her bedroom, the hero creates a reality of her own beyond the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper – a pattern that has come to symbolize her own imprisonment. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, The Yellow Wallpaper stands out not only for the imaginative authenticity with which it depicts one woman’s descent into insanity, but also for the power of its testimony to the importance of freedom and self-empowerment for women.

Format: ebook Publisher:   Pages: 29
Publication: [1892] Genre: Short Story    

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Yellow Wallpaper on Goodreads

My Review

The Yellow Wallpaper forms part of my Classics Club Challenge.

This short story certainly punches above its weight. It has an air of underlying menace that is quite chilling.   The house itself contributes to this:

‘Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?’

Although there are elements of a horror story – the house no-one wants to rent, the wallpaper with its strange pattern, the barred windows, the feeling of being under constant observation – it is really an unnerving account of mental disintegration.   The author forces the reader to question whether the narrator’s husband is really interested in his wife’s welfare and anxious for her recovery or using her condition to exercise control over her.

‘He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.’

And is their room really a former nursery, with its barred windows, peeling wallpaper, rings in the walls and heavy bedstead fixed to the floor? Or has it had, does it still have, a more sinister function?

The book exposes the distorted attitude to mental illness of the time (particularly women’s mental illness) – that the person just needs to exercise more self-control, to pull them self together to overcome it. The narrator’s husband dismisses his wife’s feeling of repulsion toward the wall-paper out of hand:

‘..He said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.’

In the end, the narrator’s disintegration is complete and shocking, even more so because the story is semi-autobiographical, written while the author was suffering from what we would now recognise as post-natal depression.

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In three words: Chilling, unsettling, dark

Try something similar…The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe

CharlottePerkinsGilmanAbout the Author

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle.