British and short A Contrary review by Pauline Masurel 
The British Short Story Emma Liggins, Andrew Maunder, Ruth Robbins Palgrave Macmillan 2010 Buy this book…> As a British person myself, both by birth and residence, I am interested in the notion of Britishness, either natural or acquired. Last year I sat the British Citizenship test, which must be taken by anyone converting to British nationality. I did this for entirely perverse reasons, my conjecture being that most already-British people wouldn't pass. “What is a British story?” is the question The British Short Story raises. Is the tag “British” simply limiting the universe of stories for discussion or characterizing a set of stories as a subset of those written in English or is the tag in opposition to, say, the American short story? There’s a difference between those things that are genuinely characteristic of Britishness and those that one might seek to promote or highlight as notable about it. The British Short Story is not, primarily, a state-of-the-nation book that highlights current trends and tracks the Zeitgeist. It is an analysis of short fiction down the ages. Beginning with Victorian and Edwardian short stories, it seeks to place these within the literary context of their day, with writing that ranged from observational realism through supernatural sensationalism, detective fiction, colonial tales to trite pot-boilers, both comic and moral. The aspect of the overview I found most satisfying was its ability “to flag up types of short story which are proving to be of particular interest to critics today, including works by writers who have tended to languish outside the literary canon.” Hence, the British depicted in these stories are a disparate array of suffragettes in the city, soldiers in the trenches, ghosts and detectives, New Women and Angry Young Men. Many immigrant writers are mentioned: Saki born in Burma, Conrad in Poland, Mansfield in New Zealand, for examples. Irish exiles, such as James Joyce, are also included. The index bears witness to the rich contribution of female authors. But there is less focus on regional writing. A section on Scottish writers throws James Kelman, Ali Smith & A.L. Kennedy into the same box. Jackie Kay could equally be there, or with the women writers, but she's already residing in the Black British box. Then there is the strange decision to include many Irish (as opposed to Northern Irish) writers as “British.” Very little is said of a Celtic tradition of short stories. No authors specifically identified as Welsh are mentioned, nor is any mention made of short stories in the Welsh language. The focus seems to be primarily upon the English, rather than the British. Short stories offered writers a form of freedom to experiment, liberation from convention, from the dominant culture of the day and from formal constraints. Although, as a general reader, I found the academic tone and approach of dissecting texts a bit wearying in places, there are some tantalizing glimpses into techniques such as impressionism and symbolism and how they have been applied in short fiction. Also highlighted are the edge effects—achieved by the juxtaposition of short stories with other writing, whether it be the nonfiction content of a periodical, similar-themed stories by different authors, or a collection of fiction all by the same writer. In the end, I passed the citizenship test, undermining my argument that most already-British people wouldn’t pass. And in the end, it’s difficult to codify the British story. As is true of people, you get to know British short stories by encountering individual examples or groups, however typical or atypical. This book describes the stories in enough detail to make me want to explore and read some of them for myself—to make me want to meet the British short story, to shake it by the hand and look it in the eye, to figure out for myself what it might be. But, of course, there is no typical British short story, singular. There are only British short stories, plural—a multiplicity of fictions. Pauline Masurel is a short, British story writer who lives near Bristol, UK. Her website is at www.unfurling.net. Tip Jar | Bookstore | Index of Reviewshttp://astore.amazon.com/contrary-20/detail/0230551718http://www.unfurling.netWritersFund.htmlhttp://astore.amazon.com/contrary-20Reviews.htmlhttp://astore.amazon.com/contrary-20/detail/0230551718shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4

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