{"id":13063,"date":"2025-10-08T16:59:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T15:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13063"},"modified":"2025-10-08T16:59:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T15:59:51","slug":"best-british-short-stories-2025-edited-by-nicholas-royle-reviewed-by-paul-anthony-knowles-and-sam-cassells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13063","title":{"rendered":"Best British Short Stories 2025, edited by Nicholas Royle, reviewed by Paul Anthony Knowles and Sam Cassells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A timely reminder of the ability of the contemporary short form to move, shock and surprise its reader in a myriad of ways.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/9781784633530_345ff5af-e162-4215-bac8-967cd8d665da.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"245\" height=\"376\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b>Best British Short Stories 2025 | edited by Nicholas Royle | Salt Publishing LTD: \u00a310.99 <br \/>Reviewed by Paul Anthony Knowles and Sam Cassells\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Twenty-three years on from the launch of the \u2018Save Our Short Story\u2019 campaign, the short story is once again in a fragile state in Great Britain. The form often maligned, under appreciated and seen as a secondary form in comparison to the novel, drama, or poetry, is once again in dire straits after its early 2000s revival. Royle\u2019s introduction to the Best British Short Stories 2025 untangles the current plight facing the form. The opening of Royle\u2019s introduction, \u2018Fifteen UK Publishers that aren\u2019t afraid of short stories\u2019, uncovers that short story is seen as a form that is not to be trusted by mainstream publishers. Royle also investigates how a plethora of literary magazines, which once advocated for the short story, no longer exist and further reflects on the trend in current literary reviews and criticism to dismiss the short form. Royle succinctly makes the point that the short form, in the opinion of too many literary critics, is a form that is unable to compete with the novel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, it is vital to recognise the crucial work that Royle and the team at Salt are doing in promoting the complexity and narrative power of the short story form in this year\u2019s collected anthology. The anthology is full of innovative and emotionally examples that showcase the short story\u2019s timeless ability to capture the present moment and reflect the human experience. The anthology starts with C.D. Rose\u2019s story, \u2018I\u2019m in Love With a German Film Star\u2019, a melancholic reflection on unrequited love for the titular \u2018German Film Star\u2019 told through records that the narrator has collected. Rose\u2019s prose is full of the unflinching heartache rendered by loving someone who cannot reciprocate that love. In \u2018Incidents\u2019, Wyl Menmuir brings a fresh and bold approach towards British changeling folklore and mythology, as a child unexpectedly and uncontrollably manipulates the natural world around them leading to unnerving consequences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A personal highlight in the anthology for me and Sam was Catrin Kean\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018D\u0175r\u2019, a poignant, emotionally sensitive story on the impacts of grief. A middle-aged man returns to a small Welsh village to sort out his father\u2019s belongings after he has died. Due to his parents\u2019 early divorce, the protagonist feels a sense of disconnection and alienation from his father until he discovers the river running under his father\u2019s home. Touchingly, he comes to realise how his father would sit in his basement drinking whiskey, hoping to one day reconnect with his son. The story is simply a stunning reflection on grief, loneliness and the human inability to understand other people\u2019s motivations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another personal highlight of ours was Elizabeth Stott\u2019s \u2018A Fictional Detective\u2019, which plays on genre tropes to present readers with the sadness of a fictional detective who just wants a moment\u2019s respite from unexpected screams in the night, mysterious shadows and a slew of dead bodies interrupting his peace. Stott\u2019s story surprised us in the way it created a genuine sense of pity for the detective, making readers question more deeply the emotional and physical cost of being a world-renowned detective in crime fiction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another unusually surprising story was Ian Critchley\u2019s, \u2018Ghost Walks\u2019, telling the story of a woman having a moment of D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu as she revisits York, where she once spent her student days and met her future husband. What, at surface level, can be read as a deceptively simple ghost story turns into a complex exploration of identity, marriage and retrospection on the lives we thought we would live in the halcyon days of youth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The standout story of the anthology for me and Sam was Alison Moore\u2019s splendid, uncanny story \u2018The Junction\u2019, which focuses on a young man returning home to England from Paris after his long-term relationship has fallen apart. On his way home, he is involved in a traffic incident and takes refuge in the home of the man who caused the accident. His host is entering his twilight years, and as he waits for his car to be repaired, an unexpected friendship unfolds between them. Their tender friendship based upon lost love, loneliness and the inability to cope with the harshness of the modern world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Royle and Salt maintain their status as a beacon of hope for contemporary short fiction, once again producing an anthology that is not only thought-provoking and emotionally dense but is thrillingly experimental and full of the best fiction in the British contemporary short story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Reviewed by Paul Anthony Knowles and Sam Cassells\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A timely reminder of the ability of the contemporary short form to move, shock and surprise its reader in a myriad of ways. Best British Short Stories 2025 | edited by Nicholas Royle | Salt Publishing LTD: \u00a310.99 Reviewed by Paul Anthony Knowles and Sam Cassells\u00a0\u00a0 Twenty-three years on from the launch of the \u2018Save [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Best British Short Stories 2025, edited by Nicholas Royle, reviewed by Paul Anthony Knowles and Sam Cassells - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13063\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best British Short Stories 2025, edited by Nicholas Royle, reviewed by Paul Anthony Knowles and Sam Cassells - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A timely reminder of the ability of the contemporary short form to move, shock and surprise its reader in a myriad of ways. 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