Publisher: Unthank Books
Publication Date: May 2nd, 2017
ISBN-13: 9781910061480
My new short story collection is now available from Wordery, Waterstones, Foyles, Hive.co.uk, and the Book Depository. Please do also support your local independent bookshop! It is available as an ebook for Kindle here.
Read some of the short short stories from the collection:
God Glows For Books’ Sake
Octopus’ Garden Catapult
The Most New Sport New Flash Fiction Review
The Party, ROOM Magazine
About the book:
“Tania Hershman is a former science journalist turned short story phenomenon. Her previous collections, including poetry, have attracted enormous praise and attention and in SOME OF US GLOW MORE THAN OTHERS she invites us to sample what life is like at the cutting edge of technology, where the future appears to be rushing ever faster to meet our present. Whether she is writing about genetics, laboratory etiquette, art and experimentation, or the simplest molecules that make up our myriad world, all her stories exude the power of her precision prose. Ranging from poignant cameos and unlikely viewpoints to the most complex decisions humans can make, these extraordinary stories gently challenge our world view as we careen toward the unknown and ask us to assess what we wish to retain of ourselves, what to jettison, and what we hope to attain when we get there. Stories from this, her third collection, have been heard on Radio 4 and Radio 3.”
“This beguiling collection of writing defies categorisation and is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Some Of Us Glow More Than Others is like a 21st century Edgar Allen Poe meets Margaret Atwood, with a sprinkling of Ursula Le Guin. The bright and sometimes eerie thread of science runs through it, reminding us of our fundamentally biological nature, and illuminating the boundaries between us and technology. Hershman’s masterful, crystal clear hand weaves together satire, poetry, ethical commentary and science fiction into a tender, faintly dystopian treatment of the human condition. Science is Hershman’s muse, but Some Of Us Glow More Than Others is never sterile, and teems with the possibilities that she invites the reader to consider. Her lyrical vignettes and fragments of intriguing stories leave the reader wondering: is this the future, or an imaginative counterfactual past / a reimagination of what could have been? She reframes the familiar by tweaking small details to create unexpected and unsettling scenes that stay with you for hours, from quotidian domesticity to complex human relationships. Her lucid prose sparkles with the most evocative words science has to offer. It’s almost as if Philip Larkin rewrote Black Mirror. Science and art, genetics, religion, ecology and the animal world all come together in this extraordinary collection. I found myself constantly surprised by Hershman’s deft storytelling, perfectly captured details, and the way she drew my attention to the alien things of everyday life. Hershman navigates the complex relationship between the modern scientific world, and the soft, living creatures subject to it, with tenderness, elegance, and wit. Whether chemistry and poetry or genetics and sexuality, Hershman infuses science into her stories with a lightness of touch and great tenderness. I will be re-reading it – and not just once.”
Farrah Jarral, doctor and broadcaster
Reviews & Articles
A wonderful review by Alan McCormick on Everybody’s Reviewing: “Tania Hershman casts mysterious and magical spells in her latest collection of short stories and flash fiction. She somehow manages to be forensic yet lyrical, playful yet profound, disturbing yet compassionate. Her scope is daring, unique and revelatory, investigative and sharp; continuously, entertainingly experimenting with ideas and with words; searching for meanings in stories about religion, science and love (nearly always love); the alchemy of life examined in startling ways, robots and octopi, the human spirit tested but winning through. It’s a beautiful book.” You can read the full review here.
In his review on The Short Story , Rupert Dastur calls the book: “a mind-bendingly good collection … As the title suggests, many of the short stories are concerned with a light – glowing, illuminating, radiating – that offers a glimpse, a revelation as it were, of something formerly unknown. There is a sense that this is what Hershman hopes to achieve herself with this book – her careful prose shining down on the world of science, of strange happenings and lonely souls who step into the darkness, to explore the world and the future that is before us, the further and better to see. Does Hershman achieve this? Absolutely. Read the full review here.
In her review in Litro, Christina Saunders says: “Hershman’s genius lays with her ability to prize open the ordinary: moles, flavours, video-games, gasometers, flipping our vision until objects stare right back, transformed, gorgeous, broken, and wanting.”
Our Book Reviews calls it “A really excellent collection of short stories that you are sure to enjoy and if you’re unsure about the genre then this is an excellent place to start.” Read the full review here.
I recently wrote an odd hybrid article about the collection for Necessary Fiction’s ‘Research Notes’.
Sabotage Reviews says: “Hershman creates credible human characters who have dreams and social lives beyond the work they do in the lab – and the funding applications that come with it. It packs quite an emotional punch for a story about inert lab meat.” Read the full review here.
Bookmunch calls the collection “an extremely readable book by one of the best in the business” – read the full review here.
Over on SkyLightRain, Judy Darley writes: ” Each of the tales examines, in its own way, what it means to be human, and the potential kindnesses and cruelties lying in wait both around and within us. While many lead us into laboratories, other sneak us into more unexpected places of moral and quizzical reflection, sometimes under cover of darkness. Treading with care among Hershman’s phosphorescent phrasing, you’ll feel like a collaborator, sharing in her protagonists’ discoveries….
The lyrical quality of Hershman’s prose is echoed in the rhythm of the collection’s arrangement; divided by semi-themed sections and shuffled with care to balance brief, intense flashes with more sustained contemplations. Birds, sea creatures, mice and cells with uncommon sentience hum in quiet corners, and a faint glimmer of loneliness laces the shadows.” Read the full review here.