Not every story needs to give us answers. In fact, the ones that stay with us often don’t. They leave space for uncertainty, for reflection, and for the mind to wander long after the final page. Alex Grant understands this better than most. In his collection A Different Approach and Other Stories, he employs ambiguity not as a trick, but as a tool, transforming uncertainty into one of the most compelling aspects of his storytelling.
Grant’s stories begin in familiar places: council offices, libraries, homes, even prisons. But what makes them fascinating isn’t just what happens. It’s what isn’t fully explained. Each story feels complete, yet slightly open-ended, allowing readers to fill in the blanks with their own thoughts. That openness is what makes the collection so addictive. You don’t just read these stories; you think about them afterward.
Take The Very Terrible Thing, for example. It tells of a child terrified by a mysterious figure on a church steeple. The fear is simple but powerful. The story never reveals who or what the figure really was, and it doesn’t need to. The power lies in the not knowing. By leaving the mystery unresolved, Grant captures the essence of fear itself, how it persists in the imagination long after the danger has passed. Readers finish the story not with closure, but with reflection. They remember their own childhood fears and the way the mind can turn shadows into monsters.
In TAPP, ambiguity takes a different form. The story describes a justice system where criminals are punished in exact proportion to the severity of their crimes. Everything seems carefully planned and logical. But as we follow the executioner carrying out his duties, the question grows: is this truly justice, or just a well-organized cruelty? Grant never gives a direct answer. The result is a story that unsettles not because of what it says, but because of what it leaves unsaid.
The title story, A Different Approach, works in the same way. What starts as a council’s seemingly straightforward new policy regarding littering spirals into an unexpected nightmare of overreach and fear. Yet even at the end, we’re left wondering who’s really at fault: those enforcing the rules, the system that created them, or those breaking the law? The ambiguity forces readers to think beyond the page, to consider how easily ordinary life can slip into moral confusion.
Other stories, such as Questions and An Important Meeting, leave readers pondering even bigger issues. One explores what happens after a near-death experience through a surreal encounter that raises more questions about the possibility of an afterlife than it answers. The other imagines God holding a staff meeting with the angels and saints to discuss creation’s failures; a setup that, without mocking religion, is both amusing and deeply thought-provoking. In both cases, the endings don’t tie everything together neatly. Instead, they leave a door open for readers to interpret what they’ve read in their own way.
Alex Grant’s genius lies in trusting his readers. He doesn’t spell everything out. He allows uncertainty to do the work, turning each story into an invitation to think rather than a puzzle to solve. It’s this space for imagination, and the haunting sense of “what if?”, that makes his stories so memorable.
If you enjoy fiction that lingers in your mind and challenges you to find your own answers, read Alex Grant’s A Different Approach and Other Stories and discover how powerful ambiguity can be.
Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FF3PZ1QT/.
