Ailsa Cox

I was disappointed in this book. It looks in turn at several genres of short story. But instead of focusing on character-building and plot development, it basically gives extensive examples of how other authors have written in the various genres. The examples given are fairly literary and mostly rather dark, even those labelled humourous; not the kind of thing that appealed to me at all. There were a lot of exercises at the end of each chapter, none of which were remotely appealing.

For someone who enjoys dark and literary short stories, this book might be useful. But I found it rather tedious. It took me over a year to wade through it as I kept losing interest, and I simply skimmed the last couple of chapters, hopeful that I might find something more interesting.… (mehr)