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 Welcome to issue 28. We are pleased to present short fiction by Steven Rinehart (U.S.), whose collection Kick in the Head I discovered while on a short trip to the States last fall. l was drawn in by the blurb: "deftly crafted and oddly resonant portraits of men behaving badly and men who have had it bad." It proved to be an impressive debut collection; in "Burning Luv" Rinehart presents an ex-navy drifter - a memorable character in a memorable short story. Also from the U.S. we have Lawrence Schimel, well known for his writing and anthologies of gay erotica, for which he has won the Lambda Literary Award.
Schimel offers the titillating story "Water Taxi," which happens to be set right here in Barcelona during a Gay Pride Festival. Scottish writer Brian McCabe is known to U.K. readers for both his poetry and fiction. Here we have "Relief," a short story about a man’s habitual weekly visit to a sex-massage parlour, which on this particular visit takes a slight turn. New writer Marshall Moore (U.S.) impressed us with his short piece "Sunset over Brittany," which follows a young photographer in Berkeley. Four choice and diverse stories, which we’ve selected from our reading to be among the very best contemporary short fiction available. We hope you enjoy our offering. Our "Pick from Back Issues" is Charles D'Ambrosio’s "Her Real Name." This marvellous story (from D’Ambrosio’s collection The Point) is an all-time favorite of mine. I include it in my class of contemporary American fiction where it never fails to attract students and generate much discussion. If it’s new to you, be sure to have a look. We’d enjoy hearing your comments as well - on this and all of our fiction.TBR’s interview is with Scottish writer James Kelman (Booker Award winner for How late it was, how late). Kelman recently released Translated Accounts, a novel that departs radically from his earlier work and its focus on the Scottish working class. Fabio Vericat questions Kelman about this latest work and other matters, such as the Celtic/Rangers football rivalry in Glasgow.We were late in getting word out about our Joyce Carol Oates’ Quiz last issue, so we’d like to extend it for another two months. Don’t miss it if you’re an Oates’ fan - and you just may win a free book. A word about book reviews: the late Elizabeth Young once wrote: "You cannot review a book properly when it is being offered for sale at a discount at the end of the piece." How true. Sometimes, however, offering on-line book ordering makes sense, especially for an on-line international review like TBR where many readers will not be able to find the books reviewed in their local bookstores (or countries). Which is why we offer a click to Amazon - with whom we have no affiliation - at the top of our review page. You will also sometimes see in TBR a review of a short story collection by an author whose work we’ve published, and wonder how fair and independent such a review can be. The answer is simple: we’re all readers, we each read between 3-4 books a week, and if we find an author who wows us, we may approach them to reprint a selection; hence, a story and a review. This issue, we happen to have several such reviews - authors whom we discovered in our reading, who bowled us over, and whom we went after to publish in TBR. We hope you take note because that’s why we do what we do - read as much as we can in order to present you with what we have found to be the most impressive writing available. In other words, we have our horse before the (cash) cart, and I think Ms. Young would approve. I would hope so as she is an icon.Good reading to all. The Barcelona Review is a registered non-profit cultural association |
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