This month, the book club moves away from novels for the first time. April's book of the month is Helen Simpson's prize-winning third collection of short stories, Hey Yeah Right Get A Life. These tales, loosely interlinked by the characters that weave their way through them, fading in and out of focus as the collection moves forward, take as their overarching subject the position of women in the 21st century. Simpson turns a penetrating eye on the demands and restrictions of the frequently conflicting states of marriage, family and work, and produces a series of beautifully-constructed, lucid vignettes of modern womanhood.
In his columns on the novel, John Mullan considers the ways in which Simpson's choice of the short story form underpins the theme of confinement that runs through her collection, and the technical ways in which her stories work. Read his columns in full here, then let us know whether you agree with him.
