I've heard that from a few other people, but Never Let Me Go is the first Ishiguro novel I've read.

I've heard that from a few other people, but Never Let Me Go is the first Ishiguro novel I've read.

I've just read the two, but I have When We Were Orphans sitting on my pile of the Unread at home. I like his style a great deal. Someone who can produce such an emotional broadside without you ever seeing it coming is a remarkable talent.

Seriously! I compared him to a magician on my blog. Marilynne Robinson has a somewhat similar masterful approach to subtle realism and emotional misdirection.

Jilli, I liked Son of a Witch. I may still be living in the land of believing that there will be a part 2.

Aimee,apart from the lack of ending, what bothered you?

The plot points that were mentioned and never followed through.

Come join me in the land of anticipating a trilogy. We've got the minions building some pyramids. They're quite fetching.

Say, noir fans, it looks like there's an imprint specifically for Spillane-esque novels: [link]

Cool. More crack. Debet, talking about pyramids? Makes your tag really fitting

Is a mysterious/ambiguous/unresolved ending desireable?

My favorite ending is probably Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" which has plenty of mystery but little ambiguity.

The ending to "Good Country People" is also shocking but twisted and satisfying.

I.B. Singer's short stories tend to gently sled to a stop, but have no less kick for that.

Singer and O'Connor and Fitzgerald are my favorite short story writers. "Babylon Revisted" doesn't need a kicker ending to have a huge punch.

When I moved to San Francisco I went to a used book store and bought a different Singer collection once a month. They were so cheap and so good. "The Spinoza of Market Street," "Taibele and Her Demon," "Gimpel the Fool." (the latter a big part of my moral formation)

Borges short stories are mysterious and ambiguous and the endings tend to point you toward the metaphoric base, and resolve some puzzle elements. So he works backwards from Raq's formulation.

I'm fond of the short stories of O'Connor & Borges, too. Hemingway is a surprisingly great short story writer, much better than he was a novelist. I don't necessarily agree that they have to end abruptly or ambiguously, but I think that, like many writing techniques, the short sharp shock can be very effective when performed well.

I just checked the Bible of current teaching about short stories: the current Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, which has made some pretty interesting changes from the one used in my Freshman English Lit class some 16 years ago. For one, having modern authors write about older short stories, such as Barry Hannah on "Heart of Darkness," sounds fascinating. Although they've tilted a bit more modern with the inclusion of writers like Hannah, Madison Smartt Bell, and Andrea Barrett, they still have a good grasp on the stories that I would consider the most influential to modern short fiction writing, such as Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," Faulkner's "The Bear," Welty's "Why I Live At The P.O.," and Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." I'm interested to go home and see what's been cut now.