Short Stories

Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

From Kandahar to Sarajevo and the forests of Lithuania to the Congo’s boot camps, these short stories weave a dark and disturbing web, interlacing documentary accounts with imagined testimonies to give a voice to the many silenced casualties of war. An elderly woman on a bus tells a love story drawn from the depths of Soviet history; a soldier returns from his first tour of duty unsure he deserves his hero’s welcome; and a Norwegian immigrant pieces together a family history fractured in the aftermath of Nazi occupation. These are just some of the stories that, individually, bear witness to a thirst for conflict that seems both unquenchable and foreign. Together, they bring the question of collusion and responsibility all the way back to the reader’s own doorstep.

Now a “provocative” and “impressive” ( Variety ) film from director Gia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter)—starring Emma Roberts, James Franco, Nat Wolff, and Val Kilmer—the fiction debut from James Franco that Vogue called “compelling and gutsy.” James Franco’s story collection traces the lives of a group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. In “Lockheed” a young woman’s summer—spent working a dull internship—is suddenly upended by a spectacular incident of violence at a house party. In “American History” a high school freshman attempts to impress a girl with a realistic portrayal of a slave owner during a classroom skit—only to have his feigned bigotry avenged. In “I Could Kill Someone,” a lonely teenager buys a gun with the aim of killing his high school tormentor, but begins to wonder about his bully’s own inner life. These “spare and riveting” ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) stories are a compelling portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth. Palo Alto is, “a collection of beautifully written stories” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) that “capture with perfect pitch the impossible exhilaration, the inevitable downbeatness, and the pure confusion of being an adolescent” ( Elle ). Features a bonus essay by James Franco on Gia Coppola's film adaptation.