Transgression and Empowerment in Sarah Hall’s Short Fiction

This essay delivers an analysis of the innovative short fiction of contemporary British writer Sarah Hall. It gives particular consideration to the first two collections of short stories published by the author, The Beautiful Indifference (2011) and Madame Zero (2017), as well as looking into the possibilities offered by her latest collection, Sudden Traveler (2019). Hall focuses attention on such varied contemporary preoccupations as identity, gender, violence and death. My goal is to discuss the way that identities are subverted or transgressed in her short stories and how the topic of identity representation intersects with other themes becoming a fundamental and empowering factor in the narrative structure. Hall’s short story collections present an interesting case study, not only because they display the writer’s quest for a unity of subject-matter, but also because they evince the strength and vitality of the short story as a genre.