Short Story Standout: The Other Side of the Hedge

Okay, even though Short Story Month officially ended yesterday, since I took an extended blogging absence I didn’t actually get a chance to post about any of the short stories I read. For shame! Well just because it’s June now doesn’t mean I can’t talk to you about one short story I found particularly awesome.

It was The Other Side of the Hedge by E.M. Forster. Now, it’s really a very short read but I found it truly remarkable. The gist is that there is a man walking down a road, he decides to go through the hedge and ponders his journey. Oh but it’s so much more!

I’m not religious at all so I could tell I was definitely not getting a lot of the intended symbolism, but even to me I got the feeling that this story was about the journey of life and the passage into death. And I guess some could see this as a passage into heaven, though since I’m not religious I saw it as much more grim. There was an eerie chill while reading it.

After reading the story (which had a great little twist at the end which I won’t spoil), I wanted more information. I started googling and found this great little synopsis: http://westwood.fortunecity.com/agnes/340/forster.html (there are many others on the web but I really liked what this person wrote). Reading this made me want to go back and read the story again because I feel it would have even more meaning the second time, especially with some more knowledge in my belly.

If any of you come across this wonderful short story, please read it, you won’t regret it. I had never read anything by E.M. Forster before but now I’m eager for more!

May is Short Story Month!

So I just found out today from The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog that it’s Short Story Month. How great is that? Just when I was getting all sad that National Poetry Month had ended I have something new like this to look forward to, hooray!

It got my brain a-turning (which is tricky for this early in the morning, luckily I just started drinking my yummy latte) for what to do to feature short stories in my blog for the month. Unfortunately I don’t read many short stories. Whomp whomp. But this month gives me an excuse to change that! So I think that plan is that tomorrow after work I’m going to run to the bookstore (a dangerous place, I know) and pick up a good volume of short stories. I’ve been meaning to do this anyway so…

And I need to go run errands tomorrow regardless because I’ll be going out of town Thursday to NEW ORLEANS for 4 days. Yeah that’s right. I’ll be gone Thursday through Sunday so don’t expect any posts from me in that time. It’s okay, you can be sad about it. You can even cry. I won’t judge you ;)

So, to sum up, in honor of Short Story Month I’ll be buying a volume of short stories to read and I’ll be trying to read at least one new short story per week and then give you a good little review on my blog. The review probably won’t be the same in-depth awesomeness that you’re used to though since I’ll see be posting my regular book reviews as well, but I’ll see what I can pull off (I’m only human!).

Oh, and if YOU want to post about Short Story Month on Twitter, be sure to use the hashtag #ssm2011.