Cirrus@Austlit

'When American writer Flannery O’Connor had difficulty writing her debut novel, she pretended to herself that every chapter was in fact a self-contained short story, the form with which she was most comfortable. This trick she played on herself allowed her to complete her first full-length work of fiction, Wise Blood.

'The nine individual chapters of Anna Krien’s first novel, Act of Grace, contains many of the features of the modern short story (starting, as Chekhov advised, in the “middle of things” and ending with narrative resonance, rather than resolution).'  (Introduction)