Tag: Fiction

  • Short Story Review: “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

    (The short story “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh appeared in the May 5 th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    I like this story a lot, so I’m not gun’na fart around with some cute opening here. “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a very good story and you should read it.

    Overly Simplified Synopsis: A exterminator meets a single mother and her son while on the job, and they all become involved.

    To start with, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh crafts this story very well. Every time I have read this story, I keep coming to a better appreciation of how all the pieces of this story are laid out, how they interlock and interact. For example, the first section of this story establishes the character of the exterminator, how he views himself and his job. Then going into the next part, when he meets the mother, we are shown the ways she tries to take care of herself and her son which leads us to understand, from the previous section, why the exterminator would identify with her. It’s a little cheesy to say this, but Sayrafiezadeh does an excellent job of “showing” us who these characters are, and not “telling” us. (And somewhere in the world, a creating writing professor just got his wings!) But seriously, each section builds on the previous, creating a momentum in the story with their actions. The narrative never gets mired down in explanations, because Sayrafiezadeh provides a clear understanding of these characters motivations by what they are doing.

    And these are characters that have lived, and maybe they haven’t had the best breaks in life, but they aren’t broken either. There is an optimism to them, but also a melancholy. Are they repeating past mistakes, or trying to make amends for their past? I was fascinated with how the exterminator never said he cared about the mother and her son, but his actions were that of a guy who wants to take care of them. The fact that he gave up his day sleeping time to be with them, wasn’t lost on me. And this was a mother who hadn’t given up on her ambitions, but she knew she had responsibilities which she did her best to uphold. I felt I knew these people, and wanted them to succeed, to carve out the happiness they deserved. But there felt like a little dark cloud hung over their lives, keeping the story grounded in realism, because life’s not always fair, no matter how good intentions attempt to be.

    I wanted it to work out. I wanted them to be happy, but there isn’t a clear, concrete answer to what happens next, and that’s okay. I’m good with the decision that Sayrafiezadeh made to end it the way he did. Maybe it’s a bit of a ploy – yet I would argue that over the course of the story, we have been shown how these characters continually make choices to be together. So why would that change at the end of the story when they reach the crux of their situation?

  • A Question for the People Who Read My Short Story Reviews

    For those of you who read my short story reviews, and I guess anybody else out there for that matter, are there any short stories that came out in the last six months from either big or small publications, that you would recommend?

    Please leave your suggestions in the comments so we can all enjoy your endorsements.

    Thanks for taking part…

  • Short Story Review: “Hatagaya Lore” by Bryan Washington

    (The short story “Hatagaya Lore” by Bryan Washington appeared in the March 31st, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Kotori Mamata

    When I moved to New York City, a place I always wanted to live in, it took years before it felt like my home. It took even longer for the guy who works at the bodega at the end of the block to acknowledge me at a regular in the neighborhood. (He now calls me “chief” instead of “you.”) But gradually, it started to feel like my home, and now it’s hard to think of it as anything but. Bryan Washington’s “Hatagaya Lore” examines how a place can become your community, and then your indispensable home.

    Here’s an overly simplified synopsis: The narrator and his husband move to Tokyo from Dallas. At first the narrator isn’t sure how to fit in, but soon finds his community, which leads to changes and growth.

    What I loved about Bryan Washington’s story is how he intersects community and intimacy, and the connections that are created from it. The narrator goes out and finds a community that he can connect to that sustains him as he journey in Japan. Yet, there is also a need in the narrator for more of an intimate connection with people, which isn’t always sexual, but is necessary to keep the narrator grounded, as the person he is growing into is beginning to flourish. Also, I liked Washington’s choice to have the narrator tells us, ever so briefly, about other relationships the he has had over the years in this story, but aren’t explained in detail, thus creating a feeling of trust and confidence between the narrator and us the reader; that we are only being told what is most important to the narrator, and nothing superfluous. It’s as if we are being added into the narrator’s community. Finally, I commend that the climax of this story is not the narrator “realizing” something profound, but is the narrator listening and observing.

    Bryan Washington’s writing skills are just phenomenal. He is one of my favorite “less is more” writers out there. Spartan is a fair description of how he describes most things in this story, but I am never left wanting for more, or feeling that details are missing. I appreciated how subtly the disillusion of the marriage was shown. In this story, a scene of their breakup isn’t needed, but showing that moment when the trust between the couple, that break in emotional intimacy, spoke volumes about the state of their relationship. And this story is peppered with moments like that, where there is a breath and space in this writing that allows weight to be infused in these situations.

    I’m a fan of Bryan Washington, and I can admit that I might not be the most objective person when it comes to evaluating this story, but eh… It’s a good story all around. I enjoyed being with these characters, seeing them interact, and watching them grow and find their place in the world. Some homes are made, while others are discovered.

  • Short Story Review – “Good Girls” by Martha Keller

    (The flash fiction story “Good Girls” by Martha Keller was first published in Milk Candy Review on September 19th, 2024.)

    One of the many things that I love about flash fiction, as a form of storytelling, is that it lends itself quite well to writers willing to play with the structure and the form that a narrative can take. Martha Keller accomplishes this deconstruction of a traditional narrative, rather well in her piece “Good Girls,” which appeared in Milk Candy Review back in September of 2024.

    After an opening paragraph, which describes the immortal clashes between girls on swings and boys who wish to remove them, the story takes on a narrative structure of examining consequential moments of life, every five years. What Keller uniquely creates is not a linear progression, but more like a retrograde motion, starting at the age of 30, and descending to a newborn. This format enables the reader to compare the desires and aspirations of each age, but highlighting specifically how what is important at a certain age, wasn’t even on the horizon just five years before. In considering this structure, it plays with a level of menace that seems just below the surface in each of these ages. How in each age, something is sought and even acquired, but the feeling of it being taken away is also present, which goes back to the opening paragraph of the girls on the swings and the boys wanting to take that from them.

    “Good Girls” is very efficient and succinct as a flash piece; only 400+ words. Keller doesn’t waste any time in this story. This directness coupled with the unique structure of its narrative creates an insightful work of flash fiction.

  • Short Story Review: “Five Bridges” by Colm Tóibín

    (The short story “Five Bridges” by Colm Tóibín appeared in the March 10th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Todd Hido for The New Yorker

    Sometimes when I start reading a short story, in the back of my mind, I start rooting for it. You know, cheering it on, hoping that the story succeeds. Like wishing that your favorite ballplayer hits a homerun when they’re at the plate. So you see, I found myself really pulling for Colm Tóibín’s “Five Bridges” to do well, and accomplish its goals.

    Here’s an overly simplified synopsis: Paul, an Irish guy who has been living in the United States illegally for over thirty years, has decided to move back to Ireland, but in so doing, that will mean he will have to leave his daughter, whom he fathered with woman he never married. But before he leaves, his daughter wants Paul, the mother and the mother’s husband, to all hike Mount Tam which is outside of San Francisco.

    It all starts well. The first section is about Paul hiking with his daughter, Geraldine, and then she tells him her idea about everyone hiking together to Mount Tam. Then at a very leisurely pace, we learn about the strained relationship Paul has with Geraldine’s mother, Sandra. We learn about Paul’s profession as an unlicensed plumber, his socks filled with cash, and his recovery over his alcoholism. Then the story takes a rather hard right turn with the introduction of Paul’s friend Kirwan, another Irishman, and the semi support group Kirwan creates for other single Irishmen living in the Bay Area. Then the story shifts back to Paul, Geraldine, Sandra and her husband, Stan, as the hike up the mount. I’ll leave it there as to not ruin the ending.

    As you can see, Tóibín layers his story, and generally it all works together smoothly, with the exception of that hard-right turn with Kirwan. Also, several themes play under the surface here; fathers and daughters, blended families, immigration, culture clashes, redemption, penance… And as the story went on, and I got closer and closer to the final page, that’s when I started hoping and rooting for this story to all pull together.

    I was enjoying what I was reading, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing was getting it’s full due time to resolve itself. When I encounter stories that feel like this, it’s hard for me to shake the feeling that the piece needs a larger format (a novel) to explore the characters, motivations and themes. I wouldn’t go as far to say I was disappointed with the story; more like I was pulling for it, and wanted to it work.