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Christmas Not Just Once a Year

Post category:Novelettes

Christmas Not Just Once a Year: Short story by Heinrich Böll This farcical comedy by Heinrich Böll can be looked at from two perspectives. The first is as a Christmas satire. After years of austere Christmases during World War II, the wife of a German businessman becomes hysterical when the tree for the traditional lavish family Christmas of 1946 is taken down. To prevent her being institutionalized, her family agree to re-celebrate Christmas Eve every day of the year. They go to ridiculous lengths to do this, destroying family unity in the process. Themes: family, tradition, mental illness, alienation, dehumanization, commercialization and loss of the spiritual meaning of Christmas, facing reality.

The Balek Scales

Post category:Short Stories

The Balek Scales: Short story by Heinrich Böll This story from Heinrich Böll is a social commentary about a rich family’s exploitation of farm workers. This occurs on three levels, characterized by different forms of “scales”: 1) systematic cheating, involving an incorrectly balanced set of weighing scales; 2) legal injustice, where the scales of justice are weighted firmly in favor of the landowners; and 3) social injustice, where the imbalance of power results in poor pay, long hours, and dangerous working conditions. The workers are incensed by the cheating, but accept the other injustices. Other themes: the whistle-blowing family’s courage and pride, church and wider community apathy.

The Laugher

Post category:Quick Reads

The Laugher: Short story by Heinrich Boll It is tempting to dismiss this story by Heinrich Böll as an entertaining bit of nonsense. On the surface, it is the unlikely tale of a once aspiring actor whose only talent is laughing convincingly and, where required, infectiously on demand. Although much sought after and a financial success, he detests the work because laughter is not in line with his usually sombre character. The story is a sad metaphor for the millions of people around the world who also find themselves trapped in unsatisfying jobs for which they may not be suited.

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Approximate Reading Times

Quick Read: under 5 minutes
Short Story: 5 to 30 minutes
Novelette: 30 to 90 minutes
Novella: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

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The Gold-legged Frog
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The Metaphor
Short Story by Budge Wilson. A seventh-grade girl flourishes under a flamboyant English teacher. She has the same teacher in high school, but unruly students constantly humiliate the poor woman. When the teacher dies in an after-school accident, she copes with her guilt for not reaching out with a metaphor.
Where Is Here?
Short Story by Joyce Carol Oates. A man behaves strangely as he confronts pleasant and unpleasant memories during a visit to his childhood home. Interpretations include revisiting a scene of child abuse and/or patricide, and a ghostly warning from the past or future about looming danger or a cursed house.
The New Dress
Short Story by Virginia Woolf. A middle-aged, lower middle-class woman has gone to great lengths to have the perfect dress made for an upper middle-class party. The moment she arrives, she sees that the dress is “not right”. Highly embarrassed, she imagines everyone is mocking her.
The Boarded Window
Short Story by Ambrose Bierce. A grieving and possibly PTSD affected man shows no sign of traditional mourning over his wife’s death. His decision to shut himself off from the outside world could well result from a sense of shame and/or guilt over his part in her death.

The Enchanted Buffalo
Grade 3-4 Story by L Frank Baum. A treacherous bison bull kills his herd’s aging and much loved king. His only threat is the old king’s young son who, with help from the “Evil Genius of the Prairies”, he plans to eliminate before he reaches maturity.
Only the Dead Know Brooklyn
Short Story by Thomas Wolfe. New arrivals in a city often learn things and visit places that long-term residents don’t know about. Here, two highly opinionated men differ over the narrator’s warnings about the dangers of the “nice sounding” neighborhoods the stranger has chosen for his nightly walks.
The Hack Driver
Short Story by Sinclair Lewis. A young lawyer is sent to a small town to serve a summons on a man needed for an important case. Although unsuccessful, he thoroughly enjoys his time with a helpful hack driver who drives him around all day, always one step behind his quarry.
The Eatonville Anthology
Short Story by Zora Neale Hurston. A series of vignettes and anecdotes about life in a small African-American community outside Orlando, Florida in the early 1920s. The stories are based on real people and events or local folklore, thus capturing the local color and folksy spirit of the town.
The Distant Past
Short Story by William Trevor. Irish villagers have good-naturedly mocked an elderly brother and sister for maintaining their family’s traditional British allegiance for over 40 years. When the Irish “Troubles” of the 1960s rekindle Republican hatred and mistrust of the British, the once well-liked siblings find themselves ostracized.