Everyday Encounters
SynopsisPlot
One has to move on, with one’s imaginary hopping from one stance to another, from rancour to joy, resentment to kindness, holiness to blasphemy. Some moments of our lives are the most memorable ones, and are more significant than hours or maybe years… Moments of happiness, loss, embarrassment, moments of hope. Portelli writes about these memorable moments. Portelli’s swift, conceptually clear and sharp short stories provide us with ordinary yet complex social encounters… sublime encounters that transfer authentic realities into realistic narratives.
Story
About this book
Everyday Encounters is a collection of short stories by John P. Portelli, a Maltese author. The stories focus on brief, charged moments in ordinary life: flashes of happiness, loss, embarrassment, and hope. Rather than building long arcs, Portelli works in compact scenes drawn from social interactions that most people would recognize from their own experience.
The collection moves between contrasting emotional states. One story may center on resentment, the next on kindness; one on irreverence, another on something close to grace. Portelli treats these shifts as a natural part of how people actually live, where a single encounter at a shop counter or a family table can carry more weight than months of routine. The writing stays direct and conceptually precise, favoring clarity over ornament.
The stories are rooted in everyday settings and situations, yet the characters and their small decisions carry real complexity. Portelli is interested in the gap between how ordinary a moment looks from the outside and how significant it feels to the person inside it. The collection was published in Malta, where Portelli is based.
