Cassie McCullagh

No time for novels?

That's fine, because we have dozens of short stories instead.

Hi, welcome to the Bookshelf.

I'm Kate Evans.

Robert Drew's short story collection, The Body Surfers, was published in 1983.

Now, he writes novels too, but those stories he writes of life at the edge of the country, they've really defined him.

Well, we're reading his latest collection today, The True Colour of the Sea.

While Roxane Gay writes essays and provocations as well as fiction, she's well known for her bad feminist work as well as hunger.

But her story collection, Aiti, explores what it means to be a Haitian American.

Another writer with a long career, the late William Trevor.

The Irish writer died in 2016, but his collection Last Stories has just been published.

Yeah, she also wrote Eligible, a novel based loosely on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, except the sisters in the family are entirely contemporary and they get caught up in a ridiculous reality TV show.

Cassie, when a friend recommended it to me, I wasn't at all sure about reading another novel that reworked Jane Austen, but it won me over quite quickly and I found it funny and very irreverent, although it's not one for the Janeites or the purists, I'd have to say.

Zombies.

There are no zombies in this one.

It makes Julie feel really alive and adult and connected with this man.

So she ends up imagining a whole life with him because of this spirited communication.

Like she just is longing for intelligent adult conversation.

And then it becomes so excruciatingly awkward.

Yeah.