In the summer of 2019 I signed up for another round of short story courses at the City Lit. Science fiction stories are all very well, but there is a whole world “out there”. And frankly, I was starting to feel that I was missing out. Knowing there is so much more to read is a great incentive to retain as many marbles as I can, for as long as I can — but….

Did I mention, in my review of the American Gothic course, that the word “short” seems to have a different meaning to different writers? In some cases, it means six words, while in others it can mean a hundred or more pages. Now, I love reading as much as the next person, but be reasonable! Each time I picked up one of the stories, I had to start again because it was so convoluted. So my misery was made even worse.

Eventually, I reached the end and breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Now for the next one on the list — thank goodness.”, I said to my wife as I replaced the book on its shelf.

This article has been written in the style of Oulipo, a form of writing in which a particular rule is observed by the writer. For example, the piece may exclude all words containing the letter ‘e’. On the other hand, it may consist only of words containing the letter ‘e’. A recently-published book, The Penguin Book of Oulipo, features a hundred examples of the form. (That’s an Amazon affiliate link by the way.) The article above contains the name of the author of the short story I referred to, hidden in plain sight. Can you work out who it is?