Author | Magnus Mills |
---|---|
Cover artist | Sarah Greene |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing Plc |
Publication date | October 2010 |
Media type | Print & eBook |
Pages | 128 |
ISBN | 1-4088-0997-4 |
Screwtop Thompson, Booker Prize-shortlisted author Magnus Mills' third collection of short stories, [1] brings together ten short tales that "trundle gently between the ordinary, absurd and the outright surreal." [2] Mills writes short stories described as "solid, crafted from deceptively simple sentences and concerning simple characters trying to achieve simple goals, which makes their sudden flights of fancy all the more unexpected." [3]
The first eight stories are taken from his earlier collections, Only When the Sun Shines Brightly and Once in a Blue Moon published in 1999 and 2003 respectively.
As in his novels, all the stories are told by an unnamed narrator :
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in First Lines of Physiology: Designed for the Use of Students of Medicine, when he wrote,
If we separate from this mingled and moving stream of consciousness, our sensations and volitions, which are constantly giving it a new direction, and suffer it to pursue its own spontaneous course, it will appear, upon examination, that this, instead of being wholly fortuitous and uncertain, is determined by certain fixed laws of thought, which are collectively termed the association of ideas.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is related by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime, complete with dismembering the body in the bathtub and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's actions result in hearing a thumping sound, which the narrator interprets as the dead man's beating heart.
Werewolf fiction denotes the portrayal of werewolves and other shapeshifting therianthropes, in the media of literature, drama, film, games and music. Werewolf literature includes folklore, legend, saga, fairy tales, Gothic and horror fiction, fantasy fiction and poetry. Such stories may be supernatural, symbolic or allegorical. A classic American cinematic example of the theme is The Wolf Man (1941) which in later films joins with the Frankenstein Monster and Count Dracula as one of the three famous icons of modern day horror. However, werewolf fiction is an exceptionally diverse genre, with ancient folkloric roots and manifold modern re-interpretations.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.
In astronomy, an extraterrestrial sky is a view of outer space from the surface of an astronomical body other than Earth.
Magnus Mills is an English fiction writer. An author contemporary with him, Thomas Pynchon, described Mills's first novel, The Restraint of Beasts, as ""a demented, dead-pan comic wonder".
"Snow-White and Rose-Red" is a German fairy tale. The best-known version is the one collected by the Brothers Grimm. An older, somewhat shorter version, "The Ungrateful Dwarf", was written by Caroline Stahl (1776–1837). Indeed, that appears to be the oldest variant; no previous oral version is known, although several have been collected since its publication in 1818. Oral versions are very limited regionally. The tale is of Aarne-Thompson type 426.
Peep and the Big Wide World (PATBWW) is an animated children's television series created by Danish-Canadian animator Kaj Pindal. It revolves around the lives of Peep, Chirp, and Quack, as viewers discover, investigate, and explore the world around them.
Greuceanu is a hero of the Romanian folklore. It is a brave young man who finds that the Sun and the Moon have been stolen by zmei. After a long fight with the three zmei and their wives (zmeoaice), Greuceanu sets the Sun and the Moon free so the people on Earth have light again.
"The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It falls under Aarne–Thompson classification types 461, and 930.
Sampo is a 1959 Soviet–Finnish fantasy film based loosely on the events depicted in the Finnish national epic Kalevala. In the United States, it was released in an edited version, The Day the Earth Froze, by American International Pictures as a double feature with Conquered City. This version was later featured in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
"What the Moon Brings" is a prose poem by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on June 5, 1922. This story was first published in the National Amateur in May 1923. It's shorter than most of Lovecraft's other short stories, and is essentially a fragment. The story is based on one of Lovecraft's dreams, a common technique.
The Sea-Maiden is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, listing his informant as John Mackenzie, fisherman, near Inverary. Joseph Jacobs included it in Celtic Fairy Tales.
William Frederick Temple was a British science fiction writer, best known for authoring the novel-turned-film Four Sided Triangle.
Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was an American writer and short fiction anthologist. He published in almost every genre, but is best known for his work in the crime, mystery, western, and horror fields. His non-fiction work has been published in such publications as The New York Times and Redbook.
All Quiet on the Orient Express is the second novel by Booker shortlisted author Magnus Mills, published in 1999. As with his first novel it is a tragi-comedy with an unnamed narrator dealing with apparently simple but increasingly sinister situations.
Once in a Blue Moon (2003) is the second collection of short stories by Magnus Mills. As in his novels, each is told by an unnamed narrator :
Three to See the King, the third novel by Booker Prize-shortlisted author Magnus Mills, published in 2001, is part parable and part speculative fiction. Written after the success of his first book, The Restraint of Beasts, brought him into the media limelight, Three to See the King started out in part as a "project" to prove to himself that he could be a full-time writer. The book was so successful that reviews appeared in The Guardian, The Spectator and The Independent, and it has been translated into both German as Zum König! (2004) and French as 3 pour voir le Roi (2005).
Folktales about luminous gemstones are an almost worldwide motif in mythology and history among Asian, European, African, and American cultures. Some stories about light-emitting gems may have been based on luminescent and phosphorescent minerals such as diamonds.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold is a novel by English author Magnus Mills, published in 2015 by Bloomsbury it was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize that year.