Abstract
This chapter examines the ways in which reality, mundanity and human nature are enacted in recent short fiction by Jon McGregor and Daisy Johnson, who explore the social and psychological repercussions of an ecology menaced by rising sea levels in the liminal territory of the Fens. Both are also highly innovative writers who use the short story form to experiment with generic boundaries, and to expand the limits of contemporary realism by exploring the intersections between literary and experimental fiction and popular genres such as science fiction, folk tales and the horror story.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Alexander, Neal. 2013. “Profoundly Ordinary: Jon McGregor and Everyday Life.” Contemporary Literature 54 (4): 720–751.
Bakhtin, M. M. 1992. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist, 84–258. Austin: University of Texas Press.
———. 1994. “From M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 1965.” In The Bakhtin Reader, edited by Pam Morris, 195–244. London: Edward Arnold.
Barnett, David. 2018. “Folk Realism: The Literature Exploring England’s Legends and Landscapes.” Independent, March 2. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/folk-realism-english-literature-countryside-legends-landscape-nature-gothic-writers-fantasy-a8234691.html.
BBC Radio Four. 2018. “Open Book: Daisy Johnson.” BBC Radio Four, July 26. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbnrct.
Bradbury, Malcolm. 1956. “The Rise of the Provincials.” The Antioch Review 16 (4): 469–477.
Coleby Parish Council. 2019. Lincolnshire Parish Councils. Accessed January 3. http://parishes.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Coleby/.
D’hoker, Elke. 2017. “Living Landscapes and Precarious Lives: An Interview with Jon McGregor.” Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 7 (1): 95–105.
Fisher, Mark. 2016. The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books.
Ganteau, Jean-Michel. 2013. “Trauma and the Ethics of Vulnerability: Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs.” Études britanniques contemporaines 45 (December 2013): n.p. http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/940.
Gertler, Frances. n.d. “Daisy Johnson.” Foyles, Accessed January 3, 2019. https://www.foyles.co.uk/Daisy-Johnson.
Johnson, Daisy. 2016. FEN. London: Jonathan Cape.
“Jon McGregor Webchat.” 2013. Mumsnet. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.mumsnet.com/books/webchats/jon-mcgregor-webchat.
Jones, Darryl. 2018. “The Horror Story.” In The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, edited by Paul Delaney and Adrian Hunter, 175–192. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror. New York: Columbia University Press.
Louvel, Liliane. 2011. “‘A Skilful Artist Has Constructed a Tale.’ Is the Short Story a Good Instance of ‘Word/Image’? Towards Intermedial Criticism.” Journal of the Short Story in English 56: 19–38.
Lynch, Gerald. 2016. “Short Story Cycles: Between the Novel and the Story Collection.” In The Cambridge History of the English Short Story, edited by Dominic Head, 513–529. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Macfarlane, Robert. 2015. “The Eeriness of the English Countryside.” Guardian, April 10. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/10/eeriness-english-countryside-robert-macfarlane.
March-Russell, Paul. 2017. “The Abcanny Politics of Landscape in Lucy Wood’s Diving Belles.” Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 7 (1): 53–65.
McGregor, Jon. 2011. “On Learning to Read.” Tumblr, October 4. http://onlearningtoread.tumblr.com/post/11017277122/the-title-of-the-story-wires-is-taken-from-the.
———. 2012. This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You. London: Bloomsbury.
McReynolds, Erin. 2017. “Web Exclusive Interview: Daisy Johnson.” American Short Fiction, April 24. http://americanshortfiction.org/2017/04/24/web-exclusive-interview-daisy-johnson/.
Murphet, Julian. 2016. “Short Story Futures.” In The Cambridge History of the English Short Story, edited by Dominic Head, 598–614. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scovell, Adam. 2017. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. Leighton Buzzard: Auteur Publishing.
Swift, Graham. 2010. “Introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition.” In Waterland, v–xi. London: Picador.
The Letters Page. n.d. Accessed January 3, 2019. http://www.theletterspage.ac.uk/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cox, A. (2019). Liminal Territory in the Fenland Stories of Jon McGregor and Daisy Johnson. In: Korte, B., Lojo-Rodríguez, L. (eds) Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30359-4_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30359-4_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30358-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30359-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)