Book review: Morphologies: Short Story writers on short story writers, By Ra page

Comma Press asked 15 short-story writers to choose an exponent of the form and offer an appreciation of his or her work. Sara Maitland celebrates Nathaniel Hawthorne as a Magic Realist avant la lettre; Ali Smith recalls a formative encounter with Joyce’s “An Encounter”; Toby Litt describes how he is by turns beguiled and then “pissed off” by Franz Kafka.

One could question the selection here – only one woman (Katherine Mansfield) makes the cut; Maupassant is omitted – but the book offers fresh perspectives on familiar writers. Pick of the bunch is Adam Roberts’s entry on Rudyard Kipling, an author whose once-glittering reputation now needs a bit of buffing.