Mysterious Disappearances, a Dog, & an Unlikely Voyeur
I’ve always had what you might call a like/dislike relationship with short stories. In their favor, they perform a useful function: providing some escapist entertainment when reading time is limited. They’re like little morsels in the buffet of storytelling, (hopefully) palatable and (generally) easily-digestible... although rarely approaching the level of delicacies. Of course, the same thing which makes them desirable--their brevity--can also be their downfall. Too many short stories come across as incomplete pieces of what must (or should) have been a larger whole, leaving me unfulfilled in the end... as though I’d sat down at a table famished, prepared for a small feast, but had been served, instead, a 100-calorie bagged snack. After looking through my stacks of books (which are still pretty much everywhere ) recently, and spying several skinny little volumes peeking out from between the much larger ones--not to mention all those shorties I keep having to thumb past on my Kindle’s ...