Author: Lydia Davis
Publisher: Canongate
Hardback
Staff Pick! Cat says…
Lydia Davis is one of my all time favourite writers. When I first read her super-short stories in my first year of university I felt a massive possibility that writing and reading this sort of thing was allowed. They’re so short, some are just three lines, some a few pages. I like that and I also like the particular details of life she focuses on, the way she imbues intense, often painful, emotion into small gestures and everyday conversations.
Her output is pretty much consistently excellent so, if you haven’t read her, you could pick up any of her collections and start from there. However with Our Strangers she has decided to only let it be sold at physical bookshops, bookshop.org, and other independent retailers, i.e. not Amazon out of solidarity with independent booksellers - thanks Lydia!