Sunday Times Short Story Award 2010

[learna]

BBC News - New Zealand author Stead wins short story prize

The winning story, which emerged from an initial field of 1,152 contenders, will be published in this weekend's Sunday Times.

[Daniel del Real]

This short story sounds really appealing. Hope someone paste the link when available.

[learna]

And some information from Wikipedia:

C. K. Stead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, waiting.

[RASimmons]

You can read the story in its entirety here.

[learna]

Thank you for the link, RASimmons. Hope our expectations will be realized.

[RASimmons]

Did anybody else read it? I am curious to hear people's thoughts. Personally, I enjoyed the story itself (Mario Ivanda is a pretty neat character, even if a bit of an archetype), but was not thrilled by the prose itself. I'd be interested to read some of the other stories that Stead beat out; any chance the Sunday Times will publish a runner-up or something?

[learna]

I am going to read it this weekend.

But I found a piece of poetry by Stead:

Isola Bella : The New Yorker

[learna]

I'd be interested to read some of the other stories that Stead beat out; any chance the Sunday Times will publish a runner-up or something?

RASimmons, maybe it will be interesting for you:

CK Stead wins short story prize | Books | guardian.co.uk

Alison Flood says:

Each of the shortlisted authors ? who also include novelist David Vann and Frank O'Connor award nominee Adam Marek ? will receive ?500, and all the shortlisted stories will be published in the Sunday Times magazine, starting with Stead's entry this Sunday. Over 1,100 short stories were submitted for this year's prize.

[learna]

The story reminded me "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky and the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri with a love line. These subjects are very serious not to impress. But there is something, for me, a little unnatural.

I like this moment:

Two nights later they were lying together naked on his bed holding hands and staring at the ceiling. The sliding doors were open on to the terrace. The moon was silver on the olives and gold over the sea. He dozed, and woke when she said: “Why did it take you so long?”
“So long?”
“To ask me out. To invite me here.”
“I thought you’d think?” — he took a deep breath — “you might think it was because of Tomislav’s article. That it was just an act of revenge.”
She didn’t reply. Was that a thought he should not have aired? But she yawned and stretched, and he saw it had made no significant impression. “It might have been my revenge,” she said.
“On Tomislav? For what?”
“I don’t know. For dying. For leaving me all alone.”

[Refus de Sejour]

Meh. I found the story rather flat, but then I confess I have no great love for Stead's work. For a long time he has cast something of a baleful shadow over New Zealand literature, a shadow far out of proportion to the quality of his own writing (shadows tend to be like that).

But that's just me.

[Refus de Sejour]

After I posted the above comment, I discovered that a bit of a controversy has blown up over Stead's story, both in NZ and the UK. Here's the dirt.