Tag: Colette

March 2021 favorites

March 2021

The March stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘Lorry Raja’ by Madhuri Vijay
  2. ‘The Child’s Return’ by Rabindraneth Tagore
  3. ‘The Log’ by Guy de Maupassant
  4. ‘Alyosha The Pot’ by Leo Tolstoy
  5. ‘A Horse And Two Goats’ by R.K. Narayan
  6. ‘The Fashion Plate’ by Rhys Davies
  7. ‘Oysters’ by Anton Chekhov
  8. ‘The Tryst’ by Ivan Turgenev
  9. ‘A Russian Beauty’ by Vladimir Nabokov
  10. ‘Extraordinary Little Cough’ by Dylan Thomas
  11. ‘Roman Spring’ by Leslie Norris
  12. ‘The Golden Pony’ by Glyn Jones
  13. ‘His Excellency’ by Indro Montanelli
  14. ‘Madame de Luzy’ by Anatole France
  15. ‘A Small Sacrifice For An Enormous Happiness’ by Jai Chakrabarti
  16. ‘The State Of Nature’ by Camille Bordas
  17. ‘The Gentle Libertine’ by Colette
  18. ‘Love Far From Home’ by Italo Calvino
  19. ‘Jewellery’ by Alberto Moravia

As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.

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July 2014 favorites

july2014

July 2014

The July stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

1.       ‘Hot Ice’ by Stuart Dybek
2.       ‘The Babysitter’ by Robert Coover
3.       ‘Jeeves And The Impending Doom’ by P.G. Wodehouse
4.       ‘A Solo Song: For Doc’ by James Alan McPherson
5.       ‘City Boy’ by Leonard Michaels
6.       ‘You’re Ugly, Too’ by Lorrie Moore
7.       ‘The Flats Road’ by Alice Munro
8.       ‘Greasy Lake’ by T. Coraghessan Boyle
9.       ‘Train’ by Joy Williams
10.     ‘Testimony Of Pilot’ by Barry Hannah
11.     ‘The Joy Luck Club’ by Amy Tan
12.    ‘Liars In Love’ by Richard Yates
13.     ‘How To Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, Or Halfie)’ by Junot Diaz
14.    ‘A Poetics For Bullies’ by Stanley Elkin
15.     ‘Greenwich Time’ by Ann Beattie
16.     ‘Pretty Ice’ by Mary Robison
17.     ‘Lechery’ by Jayne Anne Phillips
18.     ‘Here Come The Maples’ by John Updike
19.     ‘Territory’ by David Leavitt
20.     ‘Bridging’ by Max Apple
21.     ‘The Circling Hand’ by Jamaica Kincaid
22.     ‘Are These Actual Miles?’ by Raymond Carver
23.     ‘The Other Wife’ by Colette
24.     ‘A.V. Laider’ by Max Beerbohm
25.     ‘White Rat’ by Gayl Jones
26.     ‘Search Through The Streets Of The City’ by Irwin Shaw
27.     ‘The Dead Man’ by Horacio Quiroga
28.     ‘A Life In The Day Of A Writer’ by Tess Slesinger
29.     ‘In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country’ by William Gass
30.     ‘The Indian Uprising’ by Donald Barthelme
31.     ‘The Facts Of Life’ by Somerset Maugham

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‘The Other Wife’ by Colette

Colette

The Other Wife by Colette, 1924

The magic trick:

Implying a lifetime in two-and-a-half pages

This is a very short story, yet it doesn’t lack for richness or depth. Colette drops little hints along the way that allow the reader’s imagination to run wild, filling in back stories and jumping to conclusions. The new wife, Alice, shows just enough insecurity, and Marc, the husband, shows just enough dissatisfaction, so that by story’s end the reader isn’t sure to whom the titular other wife refers – Alice or the ex. And that’s quite a trick on Colette’s part.

The selection:

“She’s just difficult!”

Alice fanned herself irritably, and cast brief glances at the woman in white, who was smoking, her head resting against the back of the cane chair, her eyes closed with an air of satisfied lassitude.

Marc shrugged his shoulders modestly.

“That’s the right word,” he admitted. “What can you do? You have to feel sorry for people who are never satisfied. But we’re satisfied . . . Aren’t we, darling?”

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