Why are publishers so diffident about revealing the fact that a collection of short stories is just that – a collection of short stories and not a novel?
I started reading Luck by Dhruba Hazarika with the distinct impression that it was a novel. I finished the first ‘chapter’ feeling deeply disturbed. I finished the second with a lump in my throat, expecting the ‘chapters’ to be linked in the third one. Then I finished the third one and then it dawned on me, finally, that it was not a novel after all but a collection of short stories. So I shifted gears in my head and started reading it again.
Starkly simple stories, Luck is a collection that left me squirming uncomfortable with the question of who is more humane – man or beast. I smiled wryly, I shook my head, and then I thought, why, why, why do people believe that there’s a limited market for short stories? Each one is a fully-formed snowflake, all the more moving because of its simple uniqueness.
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