Chris Womersley, "A Lovely and Terrible Thing" (Australia)

It’s December 3. Welcome back to the 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar—a literary globetrotting adventure featuring 25 stories from 25 different countries.

Our editor, Alberto Manguel, is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Here he is on Chris Womersley’s story, “A Lovely and Terrible Thing”:

“You think you know people, but they always have something hidden away,” declared the Australian Chris Womersley. This observation is malignantly played out in “A Lovely and Terrible Thing.” A young man who researches for Ripley’s Believe It or Not has an encounter with a stranger who offers to help him when the researcher’s car breaks down. After inviting him to spend the night, the stranger says that he has a severely handicapped daughter who can perform “a pretty special trick” that might interest the researcher. The reader understands that here is an invitation to the uncanny, the unexplainable, the other side of the world we call real.

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What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2021 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians. And check back tomorrow for commentary on the next story!