They May not Mean to, but They do
VICTORIA KINGHAM
Short Stories about Mothers and Fathers isn’t at all what you would expect from the title. I expected condensed, pointed fiction but instead was surprised with two dozen often painfully honest recollections, about (or by) fathers and mothers.
Steven Short with friend
This is a collaborative project, in which the editor and writer Steven Short brings together the experiences of ‘new and emerging writers’. There’s much in here that will resonate with most readers: some searing quotations (‘I always thought your happiness was my responsibility’, says one woman of her mother) resonated quite uncomfortably. More viscerally, someone else talks of the smell of facepowder on her mother’s cheek. There’s an account of a mother’s regret that her son, once so totally dependent on her, is now twenty-one with a beard, making his own decisions and his own mistakes. As a mother it can be hard to let go, hard not to remember the trusting hand in yours, the lovely bedtimes with just one more story.
There are accounts of parents’ degeneration into illness or dementia; there are others of maternal and paternal cruelty; there are yet others of unresolved yearning for one who is lost. Taken as a group, I would say that the recollections of mothers are – what? More personal, perhaps, or more about the authors’ emotions, than the stories of the fathers and their activities. One piece is indeed about how it feels not to be a mother.
This is Steven Short’s fifth themed collection. He started the imprint a long while ago when his own mother was ill with dementia. There are ‘short stories’ in the series on Mother, Madness, Animals, and Fathers, and this is a selection with some updates and new pieces. Each collection has different contributors, selected from a group who responded to Short’s callout on social media.
A small and very readable publication, the book is suitable as a gift for anyone you think might be interested (prospective parents, partners, maybe friends you know well), and despite some desperately sad content it is largely upbeat and positive.
Short Stories about Mothers & Fathers is available on Etsy, £6.50 including p&p.
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