Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue is the bestselling author of Room and more recently of a wonderful collection of short stories, Astray. Read on for reading tips a-plenty.

In October, bestselling author of Room Emma Donoghue spoke to the Guardian about literary success and how she got their in the first place.

Three and a Half Deaths by Emma Donoghue features an accident, a suicide, an act of criminal negligence . . . and a near-death experience. These stories – set in France, the USA and Canada – bring together calamities from two centuries. The third story from the collection, ‘Sissy’, explores culpability – the survivor’s guilt of the sister of a small child who died in the 1840s in London, Ontario – because the story of any death must include its lingering effects on the living. Although Emma often writes about the famous, she has a particular interest in the obscure: people whose trace on the historical record is faint, taking the form of a footnote, or a handful of mutely eloquent bones.

A brilliant story from Emma Donoghue's new collection, Astray.