Book Review: "The Penguin Book of English Short Stories" ed. by Christopher Dolley

I am reading yet another short story anthology and yes, as with the book of American short stories, I have read many of these works of short fiction before. I am more than alright with admitting that yet again, I read this on my Kindle for the sake of price. And, at the time of writing this, my moving is almost complete and my new apartment almost completely set up. The theme is Disney with some serious Winnie the Pooh vibes. I will keep you updated on how it's going. I have been having some very early mornings followed by some very late nights with hardly any time to rest in between and so, early morning reading has become a bit of a sanctuary for me. Therefore, the reading of old classics in an anthology can be comforting in this difficult time.

The book opens the way any book of English short stories should: with The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens. For those of you who haven't experienced the darkness of reading this story then I suggest you do so whilst snuggled up in a warm blanket on a nice Halloween night. It is about a ghostly figure who appears at the junction of a train. He seems to be some sort of signal-man and yet, the man who saw him cannot trace who he is or what he was doing there. Surprisingly simplistic and with a keen eye for atmosphere, Dickens creates a bleak and wonderous masterpiece of ghostly encounters.

Another story I have read before in this book is The Dead by James Joyce. Gabriel Conroy has this strange moment of realisation when a song is played and his wife recounts a man who had, in the past, loved her and died for her. This is more about Conroy realising that his wife has a life outside of him and thus, begins a bit of a philosophical epiphany. Gabriel Conroy will go on a journey in which he must confront that death is inevitable and that nothing in this life is permanent or certain.

When I first read this story whilst in school, I have to admit that I didn't think anything of it one way or the other. But, after a while of studying literature, I have come to realise that alongside A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man, these two works of fiction may be the only two I actually like by James Joyce. Sorry if you're a fan of his but if anyone makes me read Finnegan's Wake again, you're going to find out.

Who would I be if I didn't mention one of the best stories in the whole anthology? Yes, it's Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf. If you think you've read all there is to read about flowers as symbolism in Woolf's fiction then think again. This story has amazing atmosphere, close your eyes and you will feel like you're strolling through some of the most wonderful gardens in all of England. As the timelessness of the natural world is emphasised, there is a shift from place to place, person to person and perspective to perspective.

Philosophy and the inevitability of time meet in the middle together and Woolf signs it off with her signature realism coloured with artistic beauty. The small vignettes of those strolling around the gardens and passing the flower beds makes this one of the most iconic stories in the whole book. It is, perhaps, my favourite of the anthology.

From Evelyn Waugh to W. Somerset Maugham, from Graham Greene to Katherine Mansfield, from H.G Wells to Rudyard Kipling and even the great Joseph Conrad, this book combines the greatest talents of the golden age of the English short story and brings them together in one anthology. Yes, the anthology may be predictable in its choice of writers and topics, but I think it gives us a nice broad range. We have the ghost story of Charles Dickens, the intense beauty of realism of Virginia Woolf, the shadow of sin and looming sense of impending doom in Joseph Conrad, the Fitzgerald-esque persistence of want written into Maugham, the Sci-Fi terrors of Wells - and many more. What we have here is a combination of literary minds, some the greatest of their time and many are the greatest of all time.