Spring: Short Story Season

I am not sure what it is about this time of year, but I find myself gravitating towards my short fiction collection when it comes time to pick my next read. I often pull a few books from these shelves and read the first five pages of each to see which one will lure me into its stories next. I flip through some old favourites, Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River, Lisa Moore’s Something for Everyone, Julie Orringer’s How to Breathe Underwater with its lush summery cover, and the Alice Munro and William Trevor spines that will forever rest on my shelves until the next urge to reread familiar voices and characters rushes in. I spot a few recent favourites, Katherine Mansfield, Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How to Pronounce Knife, and Madeleine Thien’s Simple Recipes, whose stories are anything but simple concoctions and are instead dense, flavourful, and delectable works of language and literature. The jacket of a current favourite—Maeve Brennan’s The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin—stands empty on the shelf, the book waiting patiently on the coffee table until I have time to read again. And I hold a few that I think will one day become favourites, Tessa Hadley’s Bad Dreams, Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, and Jack Wang’s We Two Alone.

Spring was always one of my least favourite seasons growing up, it was marked by heavy rain and the unwelcome snowfall in April or May, winter’s last hurrah until November rolled around. But last year at this time, I was in England, I had submitted two essays at the beginning of April and I remember reading Carol Shields’ Small Ceremonies—a brilliant short novel—at the end of the month and spring felt different. It felt like my very first spring, almost every morning I went for a walk in the park across the street and it was as though every time I went out, a new flower had emerged and was on display. The snowdrops, the hellebores, the daffodils, and the bursting hawthorn trees with their white and fuchsia flowers decorated the otherwise gloomy, rainy days of spring and splattered the landscape with a little bit of colour. I am starting to appreciate spring much more these days. Now that I am back in the city, I check the buds on the trees outside my window every morning, and some of the green bulbs have turned out leaves, still in their early stages. And now, I am thankful for the heavy rain and I make a mental note to look for bluebells and lily of the valley in the yard the next time I walk out the front door. Spring is short-lived where I am, it comes and goes quite quickly between the cold of winter and the heavy heat of summer, but if you pay close attention, it is packed with growth and movement. This season changes the view from your window every single day, even if the change is slight, whether it’s a new tulip or daffodil, or the sudden fullness of trees that give the impression of being elsewhere.

And, what is it about spring and short stories? A part of me thinks back to the limited time I could devote to reading as a student at the end of term. I was only able to fit a story or two in right before bed at the end of a day spent studying and preparing for finals. For those few weeks, I couldn’t commit to a novel and would often pick up a collection or an anthology and find something to read on those evenings. I also think back to some of my earlier English courses and my time studying Hemingway’s short fiction, which was when I first realized how exciting and challenging it was to study literature. The short story feels like somewhat of a magnifying glass as it captures moments so vividly and explicitly in its frame—I can still remember scenes and lines of dialogue from stories I read a few months or a few years ago, they stick with me and yet still surprise me whenever I reread them. But there is a crisp freshness and an almost tangible energy that is unique to short stories, and maybe that’s what it is, maybe in its own way it matches and rivals the constant growth and pleasant surprise that comes with the beginning of every spring, maybe that’s why I reach for them most at this time of year.

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