The Orphan's Tales isn't exactly short stories - it's a form of fiction I am still trying to define (there are other examples, Tanith Lee's 'Tales of the Flat Earth' perhaps) which is non-linear and episodic in structure but with continuing connections and resonances between the different episodes. I am reminded of Blixen/Dinesen's metaphor of drawing a walk through a garden and at the end it turns out to be a picture of a stork (I think this is n Out of Africa when she's talking about the pattern of a life). Variations on a theme rather than a symphony.