Stories in the Palm of Your Hand
The short shorts in Tessa Smith McGovern’s collection London Road: Linked Stories really are made to fit within the palm of your hand — her delightful and fresh stories are available as apps for your phone or can be converted for your e-reader. For those without the handheld devices, never fear. The stories can also be downloaded onto your computer and read from the screen, or printed out (with color ink, if possible: the graphics are striking and integral to the stories!) for reading the old-fashioned way.
Whatever way you take in the words of McGovern, just make sure you do. Her stories link the lives of residents in a halfway house on the outskirts of London. Based largely on McGovern’s own experiences — her mother operated a Halfway House in Sussex — , her characters come alive through a style that is unique and lovely. McGovern uses words both easily and luxuriously and her ability to evoke place, emotion, and possibility all within the confines of a very short story is amazing. I felt as if I personally knew each character, from Janice to Nora to Isobel to Bitty, and even Len down at the pub, and I cared about them all.
That McGovern has time to write so beautifully while also launching her electronic publishing house of eChook is astounding. But as explained on the eChook website, once she created her own short story app for iPhone, iPad, and Androids, she realized she had become a publisher — and she ran with it!
McGovern makes a wonderful case for the short shorts app — literature for taking on the go — offering reasons like “ten minutes of reading provides a mini-vacation in your busy, sometimes frantic day, and leaves you feeling refreshed” — absolutely! — and “original stories and memoirs by contemporary writers expand your horizons?[gaining] insight into other people’s lives.” Again: absolutely!
I could read the London Road: Linked Stories app easily on my phone but when I converted the app for my Kindle, there were a few problems, including the loss of all “th”s in the text, along with numbers, and the graphics lost their power. I also read the stories on my computer — easy to do but out of sync with McGovern’s goal of providing pleasure on the go, reading everywhere and anywhere. I will continue to follow the trajectory of e-Chook with interest, and I will read the works of Tessa Smith McGovern, in whatever form they come.
