Questions tagged [short-stories]
Questions about stories with a fully developed plot, themes, and characters, but significantly shorter and less detailed than a novel.
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Goosebumps book about 2 kids in a haunted school
I remember reading a book, quite a long time ago, about a guy who is sent to a haunted school, where all the children are ghosts, except for a single girl, who is human like him, and she help in ...
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Has complete Moravia's "Racconti romani" been translated to English?
At Internet Archive one can find a book with the title Roman tales, which is in fact a selection of Moravia's Racconti romani translated to English by Angus Davidson and published in 1959. In words of ...
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Seeking story about chess in Soviet Union, probably Playboy c.1980?
I actually read some girlie mags for the stories growing up...this was probably in Playboy, with a lower chance of it being from Penthouse. A Soviet apparatchik has commissioned a ceremonial chess set ...
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What is the meaning of the following sentence of The Swimmer by John Cheever?
What is the meaning of the following sentence of The Swimmer by John Cheever?
His life was not confining, and the delight he took in this thought could not be explained by its suggestion of escape.
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Boy keeps breaking pocket watch fighting, opts to pay watchmaker himself rather than ask mother
I read a short story in English circa 1980-85 (although it may have been published much earlier) about a boy who carries an expensive pocket watch (perhaps inherited) but keeps getting in schoolyard ...
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Are romantic relationships where one character has fair skin and the other dark a motif of Ismat Chughtai's stories?
I've been reading some short stories by Ismat Chughtai, where I've noticed a repeating motif of romantic relationships in which one person has light skin and the other has dark.
The Veil: "At ...
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Book of short stories I read as a kid; one story about a starving girl, one about a boy who stays forever young
I can remember two short stories, and while I am not entirely sure if they're from the same book, I would hugely appreciate finding either.
The first story I remember reading about was about a girl ...
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Why would something bad fall on you because of a bad fish?
In part of Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl", these pieces of advice appear:
this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on ...
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What's the significance of the baker not letting her feel the bread in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"?
Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" ends like this:
[..] this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to ...
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Why are the mentions of being "bent on becoming a slut" repeated like this in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"?
Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" has several mentions of "the slut you are bent on becoming":
always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try ...
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What did Arthur C Clarke mean when he described the builders of Comarre as being the "Decadents"?
In Arthur C. Clarke's "The Lion of Comarre", the faction that built the city are referred to as being the Decadents by the protagonist, and by several other characters who acted as narrators ...
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How does the style of Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" affect the way it's read?
Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" is written in a very distinct style. The story is made up of one very long sentence, with different phrases separated by semicolons, each phrase giving a different ...
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What's the significance of spitting up into the air in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"?
Part of the advice given in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" is on how to spit:
this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad ...
- 23.3k
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What "might not be a blackbird at all" in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"?
Part of Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" goes like this:
don’t pick people’s flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is ...
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Why isn't the line about "how to love a man" split up in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"?
In Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl", there's this line towards the end, about "how to love a man":
this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they ...
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Why did the Pit and the Pendulum lack historical authenticity?
The Pit and the Pendulum is set in Toledo, Spain during the height of the Spanish Inquisition which began in 1478.
In the story, Poe references the Jacobin club, which was an influential political ...
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What's up with the mentions of "singing benna" in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"?
In Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl", there are repeated mentions of "singing benna", in a sequential pattern:
[...] soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing ...
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What does "grinning" mean in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen"?
At the beginning of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", when describing the distorting mirror that would then shatter, the word "grin" is used:
If a good thought passed ...
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What's the purpose of the last paragraph of Gogol's "The Overcoat"?
At the end of "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol, the ghost of Akaky Akakyevitch disappears once the Very Important Official has reformed his ways. However, after that satisfying conclusion to ...
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Short story with a man who keeps passing out due to his starched collar poking his neck
Weird isolated memory, but I was recently at our church, and when I turned my head, the collar put pressure on the side of my neck, which suddenly reminded me of a short story I read, probably in the ...
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Ending of Joyce Carol Oates story "Lady with a pet dog"
This is a rewritten Chekhov story.
This is the epiphany moment for Anna, when she accepts their love, but the ending is still quite ambiguous.
Their love beginning again, in spite of them? “How can ...
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Looking for a horror story read in an Alfred Hitchcock anthology
I'm looking for a short story where the narrator has to travel a long way, probably for work, and has to stop overnight in a village he doesn't know. He is stopped by the police for a trivial reason, ...
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Who wrote the short story "Quietly"?
About 20 yrs ago I briefly possessed a collection of science fiction short stories by various authors.
It began with a story titled Quietly.
It was about a girl named Quietly who is being raised by ...
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What does "Three-B" mean?
I'm reading a short story "Getting rid of Geogre" by Robert Arthur.
In story, there's a conversation that I can't understand (the bold part).
The context is: Laura Layne is the famous star ...
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234
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In Turgenev's "First Love", what did the father mean by “Vous devez vous séparer de cette.”
In Turgenev's "First Love", the father of the narrator Vladimir had been having an affair with a young woman Zinaída. After Vladimir's mother discovers the affair, the family moves to town, ...
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1
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Meaning of "suck on their fingers" in "Everyone Cried" by Lydia Davis
In the following quote from "Everyone Cried" by Lydia Davis, what does "suck on their fingers" mean? What is the author trying to convey here? Are they literally sucking on their ...
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Where is the story "Cages" set?
The short story "Cages" is by Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-born British writer.
Where is this story set? One character, Mansur, uses a couple of words, zuwarde and msichana, which might be ...
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What is the point of the tefillin burning in S. Y. Agnon's "Two Pairs"?
In S. Y. Agnon's short story "Two Pairs", in part 10, the narrator experiences several odd dreams involving his tefillin, and a couple strange instances with them, and then his house burns ...
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1
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A short story about artificial intelligence written by an author from Russia or Poland?
I once read an interesting short story about the possibility of a set of intelligent machines creating philosophy. Unfortunately I can't find the book that contains this short story. All I can ...
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How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous?
In Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", we have this description of Ichabod dancing:
Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not ...
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What is the name of a short story about a woman who was listening to the sound of the river?
I want to find the name of a short story and its writer.
The short story is about a woman that her husband has died in sleep.
When the police ask her about her whereabouts at the time of his death, ...
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Does "Jerry Was a Man" present a positive or negative view of civil rights?
"Jerry Was a Man" is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1947, ten years before the 1957 Civil Rights Act in the United States. The story follows a court case where it is being ...
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A bank audit reveals embezzlement when money comes up $5 off (over?)
I'd swear it's O. Henry, but all I'm getting is his real life embezzlement.
In a small town bank, an audit turns up a small ($5?) discrepancy, which eventually leads to discovering that one of the ...
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Please identify the name and author of a short story about forbidden clocks
I read that a long time ago, don't remember many details. It was a short story written in English. About a city where clocks were forbidden. Workers in the city have wristbands with different colours ...
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Futuristic/dystopian short story about a man living in a hive society trying to meet his dying mother
I'm trying to find a short story I read many years ago about a guy living in a "hive" society in which everyone lives in cells, connected (I think) by computers; the substance of the ...
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Hamster in an aeroplane who can talk - NOT 'Tales From the Riverbank'
I'm trying to remember a book I read as a kid (I'm early 50's so it would have been in the late 1970's when I read it). It's about a boy who gets a pet hamster and decides to put it in his toy ...
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2
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Why specify Mr. Berry looked into the brass like Snow White's queen in Ellison's "The Black Ball"?
My literature class assigned "The Black Ball" by Ralph Ellison. The strange white man offering a card for a union meeting has just left, and John's boss Mr. Berry has come to check on his ...
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Story by S. Maugham or S. Zweig, mother manipulates her husbands to their graves and dies after her daughter's marriage
In which story by S. Maugham or S. Zweig is it said about a mother who, by manipulation, brought her husbands to their graves, complaining of a weak heart. And then hindered her daughter from ...
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Why did Gurnah title this story "Cages"?
The short story "Cages" by Abdulrazak Gurnah is about a man, Hamid, who works as a shopkeeper - his day-to-day life and his feelings for the young woman Rukiya who comes to his shop.
What is ...
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In John Barth's short story Lost In The Funhouse, what is the purpose of the interrupted sentences?
Lost in the Funhouse is a short story often seen to exemplify metafiction, in which the author uses the story to draw attention to its construction. In the case of this tale, it switches freely ...
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Difference between "conte" and "nouvelle" at the time of La Fontaine
One of the works of the French poet Jean de La Fontaine is a collection of stories that's usually known as Contes et nouvelles en vers. It seems to me that this title implies that there was a ...
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When is the short story "Fugitive" set in chronological order?
I'm talking about "The Dresden Files" book series. Specifically, the short story is set inside "Instinct: An Animal Rescuers Anthoogy".
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Short children's story about an android who thinks they're human who creates an android
The Tomato Surprise TV Tropes page describes a story about an android who thinks they're human who creates an android.
In a short story in a children's book, the protagonist is a young prodigy living ...
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What is the significance of the ending of this short story "In the Wheels"?
The short story "In the Wheels" (available in full at that link, perhaps a 10-15 minute read) is mostly about car racing with a speculative-fiction twist, but there's a surprising (to me) ...
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Short story where a sideshow barker asks a child to debunk his paranormal exhibits, including ectoplasm
The question has most of the elements that I remember, but not the author or title of the short story, which I’ve forgotten.
The barker is setting up the exhibit and invites a child to critique it. As ...
John
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Short story about a man who steals another man's boat but can't find drinkable water
I'm trying to find a story that I heard about 20 years ago. It involves a man who is at sea and crosses paths with a well-stocked boat, so he kills the captain and claims it for himself. Although ...
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A scientist tries to make a man more intelligent
I'm looking for a short story written in the first person where a scientist takes an unintelligent man and gives him a wonder drug. The man steadily gets more intelligent throughout the story, but ...
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1
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Meaning of "The Keeper of Cademuir" by John Buchan
"The Keeper of Cademuir" is usually collected as one of John Buchan’s supernatural stories. A keeper of hunting grounds gets his hand caught in a poacher’s trap, is unable to get help, and ...
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1
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SF story, telepathic boy hunted as vampire (pre-1980)
I'm looking for a story I read a long time ago, probably a short story in an anthology sometime before 1980.
In it, a boy (or young man?) with telepathic powers is in a village where he is hunted by ...
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1
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Meaning of "starred roof" in "Appointment With Love" by Sulamith Ish-kishor
The following sentence is taken from "Appointment With Love" by Sulamith Ish-kishor. It's a reference to New York's Grand Central Station. I'm wondering why the roof is described as "...
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