Short story collection review

McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

By Michael Chabon

Published by Penguin

McSweeney’s, the American literary magazine edited by Dave Eggers, has a reputation for publishing exciting new writing by established and lesser known writers.

This anthology is a celebration of pulp fiction, to which most of the contributors have applied themselves with delight. In an anthology of twenty different stories by twenty different writers, there are bound to be some that appeal more than others, but there is plenty here to amuse and intrigue.

Nick Hornby’s story, narrated in a Holden Caulfield style about a ‘lousy second-hand VCR’ that brings love to its owner, is a small masterpiece, as is Elmore Leonard’s mini-western (Leonard could make the contents of a supermarket shopping trolley into a spellbinding novella).

Other stories have an unresolved creepiness about them that makes them linger in the mind long after lights out: Neil Gaiman has written a spooky tale about storytelling at the mysterious Diogenes Club, and in Karen Joy Fowler’s Private Grave 9, a photographer on an early twentieth century archaeological dig becomes convinced he has seen the face of a long dead princess in one of his exposures.

The book itself is an homage to pulp fiction and almost worth owning for this reason alone: the stories are typeset in two columns, interspersed with 1950s magazine adverts and dramatic black and white line illustrations. Each story is introduced by an attention-grabbing strapline (‘A man can only be pushed so far – especially when his mother is the one pushing’ is my favourite), and the book itself bound in durable board.

Great stuff; the literary equivalent of Quality Street (you’ll love most of them, but remember there’s always the strawberry one nobody much likes at the bottom of the tin).

Reviewed by James Smith, Booktrust website editor

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