Everyone has at least one of those “aha” works of literature that have changed the way they think or feel. Most of the time, it’s a novel we read in high school or a poem we found in college. I have discovered that the short story is one of the most cathartic forms of literature that exists. I loved T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is part of the reason I want to be a writer, but nothing has affected me the way my favorite short stories have. Below are several short stories that are written beautifully. They are exciting, stirring and most importantly, there is a very real possibility that reading them will change your life.
1. “On Hope” by Spencer Holst
Spencer Holst is a fascinating writer. He thinks of things that no other writers before him have thought of. “On Hope” is a very short tale about a monkey, a gypsy and a cursed diamond (I promise it’s not just the plot of an Indiana Jones movie). Holst takes this nutty, fairytale-esque situation and turns it into a reflection on the existential meaning of life and hope. While all of his stories are worth a read, this one is the perfect little aperitif to take a look at on your lunch break or after dinner. It will give new perspectives on life in less than 10 minutes.
2. “Beginning, End” by Jessica Soffer
Soffer ’07 is fabulous Conn Coll alumna who taught English last year and showed me half of the stories on this list. Her debut novel, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, is sweet, engaging and worth a read. Her short story, “Beginning, End,” however, is her most poignant work to date. Written as an exercise in keeping the story moving, Soffer frames the entire life of a couple from birth to old age in her story of 148 sentences. In those 148 sentences, Soffer captures unspeakable feelings without even trying to speak them. She has wisdom as a writer that can’t be learned, and this wisdom is reflected in “Beginning, End.”
3. “Forever Overhead” by David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace is a writer who really needs no introduction. His book, Infinite Jest, is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) contemporary novels written thus far. He is the rare kind of writer where anything and everything he has written has been exquisite, from an article about FX Porn to his beautiful ode to growing up, “Forever Overhead.” This a story that you will read in less than 30 minutes and that you will think about for years. It breathes and beats and grows with time as if it, like its main character, is alive and in the process of becoming something else. It can be read 10 times and each time a new piece of sparkling prose will trigger a thought you’ve never thought before.
4. “2026 August: There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is one of the most popular works of science fiction ever written. It is a trove of stories, some of which are brutal, some of which are beautiful, some of which are both. “2026 August: There Will Come Soft Rains” is the best story of the bunch, and it’s the perfect balance between brutal and beautiful. The story chronicles a day in the life of a house that has remained on planet Earth as everything around it has succumbed to disaster. For a story that contains no human beings, it is one of the most affecting on this list. There is eerie familiarity and significance to every benign component of Bradbury’s story. In many ways, science fiction is the most honest genre in literature, because it takes things that we know and puts them in fantastical settings where they become bare and exposed.
5. “The Other Place” by Mary Gaitskill
“The Other Place” is wickedly surprising. Gaitskill begins with drips and drops of pointed remarks and deceptive simplicities. She steadily eases the reader into the world of the narrator, so that once the story’s twist has come, one hardly notices. It is not the kind of story that someone could find their favorite lines of literature in (unlike most of the works on this list), but it is the kind of story that makes you think about something scary in an entirely new way. It will leave you realizing that there is no way to truly know what a person is thinking about, and there is no way to see someone as truly bad.
6. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
“The Things They Carried” is the name of both O’Brien’s novel and its first chapter, which is a short story in and of itself. It’s a favorite of millennials everywhere, especially those who grew up reading it in high school. The story is about soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War, and the things they carried with them throughout that war – both the physical and the emotional things. This is the story that people should read if they don’t normally enjoy reading. Its prose is heart-wrenching and simple, and it talks about war with an intimacy that is rare, especially in works regarding the Vietnam War. O’Brien reveals who the soldier really is: a scared, young man who wants to go home.
7. “Black Box” by Jennifer Egan
“Black Box” is unlike anything that’s ever been written before, and it was delivered to the world in a truly modern format: a series of tweets. This story is especially revelatory for aspiring writers because it is as stripped down as a story can be and it sacrifices nothing in the way of beautiful language and description. What Egan does with 140 characters at a time is almost unbelievable. She creates an entire vision for humanity’s future, she creates an engaging character with a full backstory, and she tells a tale filled with suspense and action. Each word has a purpose, and each insight is as breathtaking as it is vital to the story.
8. “Some Are Born to Sweet Delight” by Nadine Gordimer
This was one of the first short stories I ever read that made me gasp. It is woven with quiet intent, much like Gaitskill’s “The Other Place.” Unlike “The Other Place,” Gordimer’s story is soothing and subtle through the end. She follows a middle-class Irish family and the romance between its daughter and tenant. Her descriptions of a young love story leave the reader fulfilled until her third act shocks. Gordimer forces us to recognize our biases and our perceptions in order to make us realize the faults in them. The reader doesn’t know she’s doing it until it’s already done.
9. “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway is, of course, one of the most famous writers of all time. His writing style changed the way people thought about, and wrote, literature. “Hills Like White Elephants” is a perfect example of Hemingway’s bare-but-deep writing. The story is about a man and a young woman, a couple, who are having a discussion about something without actually discussing it. Hemingway practically invented subtext, and that’s almost all of what this story is: subtext. Reading it will make you think about every important conversation you’ve ever had, and every important conversation you’ve never had.
10. “White Angel” by Michael Cunningham
“White Angel” centers on the relationship between a boy and his older brother as they grow up together in the 1960s. It’s the most honestly sad story on this list. It captures everything about growing up that “Forever Overhead” doesn’t quite touch on. The grimier, more ambiguous moments that slip through our lives, free of reflection, because they are too strange to think about. The story’s ending is shocking and vital, and when the piece is done it feels as if it could not have had any other ending. Cunningham creates characters that seem to determine their own paths, as opposed to characters whose paths he determines. This is my favorite short story that I’ve ever read. •
