Title: Long and Short Australian Stories
Author: Margaret Lynette Sharp
Published: Createspace April 2012
Status: Read on February 22, 2013 — I own a copy {Courtesy the author}
My Thoughts:
This is the second volume of stories I have read at the request of self published Australian author, Margaret Lynne Sharp. The first, A Taste of Life and Love in Australia contains 28 engaging stories that provide a pleasant afternoon’s reading, and this collection is not dissimilar.
There are 20 vignettes of varying length in Long and Short stories of Australia, though most are less than half a dozen pages long. Primarily they feature relationships – sometimes beginning, occasionally ending. Each story is carefully sculpted to communicate the immediacy of emotion and action as succinctly as possible. Sharp’s storytellers are a mix of ages and genders, though primarily young and female, told in both the first and third person. It’s an interesting variety of perspectives and Sharp inhabits them well.
The writing is well crafted though occasionally a little too stiff and formal, using, for example, ‘mien’ instead of expression, several times. And even though they are used correctly, there is an odd over use of colon’s that I found distracting when they appeared repeatedly through out the text.
Suitable for romantics of a range of ages, Long and Short Australian Stories is a congenial, mellow short story collection and an easy read for a quiet evening.
Margaret Lynette Sharp’s short story volumes are available to purchase
Click here to read Margaret’s guest post, published earlier today
Learn more about Margaret Lynette Sharp at
Blog I Facebook I Twitter I Goodreads
Filed under: Australian Reading, Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013, Australian Women Writers Feature 2012, Author Interview/Guest Post, ★★★, Chicklit & Romance, Contemporary, Fiction, Indie/Self Published, Reviewed by Request
