Tag: Short Fiction

  • Short Story Review: “Matthew Danger” by Dylan Smith

    (The short story “Matthew Danger” by Dylan Smith appeared in Rejection Letters on January 16th, 2023.)

    (There is a chance of Spoilers.)

    I’m a little apprehensive when I start reading a story about a character drinking too much over the course of an evening. Usually that author has a deep reverence for Bukowski of Kerouac, and the drunken work the author creates is just a watered-down version of the aforementioned writers. Yet, I was taken in with “Matthew Danger” by Dylan Smith. Maybe it is just a story about a drunken night in, what I assume is, New York, but the structure Smith uses, the form of the prose, and the format that his theme is in, creates a story that is fresh and interesting.

    Here’s an overly simplified summary: The narrator has it pointed out to him, by his new manager at the restaurant that he works out, that his eyes are “All blurry and always so bloodshot.” An observation that the narrator doesn’t agree with, but as it is the narrator’s birthday, he has the evening off which he goes out into the City. First stopping at a museum to view paintings by Cezanne, then drinking many beers. The narrator encounters his friend Danger, who is a musician, and then later, another friend, Matthew. Other things happen, and I don’t want to ruin all of it, so you should read it.

    What I enjoyed most was Smith’s selective use of short sentences and paragraphs, almost like creating a staccato sound/feeling with the flow of the piece. It made the story feel disjointed, and off ever so slightly – that the world of the narrator doesn’t fit cleanly into the larger universe. Also, the use of recurring lines, about his eyes and his night off for his birthday, created the feeling of being inside the mind of someone who is drunk, with their fixation on an idea that they can’t seem to shake. Especially with the birthday line, as baptism and rebirth work their way into the theme of this story, as does the idea of death, which a nearly empty bar is used to exemplify that part of the theme. I was left with one question, which could be me reading too much into this piece; The title of the story is “Matthew Danger” and the narrator meets up with his friends Matthew and Danger, though Matthew is briefly in the piece and Danger is there pretty much the whole time, but I had this sneaking feeling that these two characters are just a manifestation of the narrator’s id, and don’t actually exist. I have nothing to back that up with, just a feeling I had when I read it.

    This story could have gone off the rails in several places and landed in cliché or caricature, but Smith crafted something that captured the mood and feeling of his narrator that was clear and understandable by an excellent use of form and structure. Well done.

  • Short Story Review: “Future Shock” by Peterson Berg

    (The short story “Future Shock” by Peterson Berg appeared in Rejection Letters on January 9th, 2023.)

    (SPOILERS AHEAD! – I think…)

    I know I have brought this up many times before, and I will be bringing it up again, but I really am enjoying all of the stories that are now coming out that are dealing with how Covid affected us. (The other night I saw a trailer for “Sick” which I believe is a horror movie set during the pandemic. I mean, if there is a film genre that is primed to deal with the anxiety of Covid, a horror movie seems pretty damn perfect.) Though the story “Future Shock” is not an overtly Covid story, I feel the pandemic is in the subtext Peterson Berg’s piece.

    Sorry to overly simplify the story – the narrator watches the movie “The Parallax View” a thriller starring Warren Beatty from the 70’s. There is one specific scene in the movie where a woman is trying to convince Beatty that people are being killed and she will be next. Beatty doesn’t believe her, and that scene jump cuts to the woman, now dead, laying on a table in the morgue. The viewing, and then obsessing of this scene leads the narrator to make a few quick and rash life decisions, which then cause him to withdraw from the world. After a few intervention attempts from his sister, the narrator is able to return to the world, at which point his with drawl may have been due to cold feet of upcoming events.

    The resolution of the story did strike me as bit of an easy button to end the piece, but what I feel brought me to that conclusion was that Berg did an excelent job of building up the anxiety, obsession, and confusion taking place in the narrators mind. And though this is not a stream of consciousness story, Berg’s writing does a great job of telling how the narrator latches on to this one scene from that movie, and keeps looking at it, replaying it, examining it, looking for some new revelation or discovery. All the while, the narrator makes quick observations of the world around him, and the tiny space he occupies in his apartment. A wonderful sense of claustrophobia is created in this story – of being trapped in this place, but also in the narrator’s thoughts.

    We might be past the dangers of the pandemic now, but I think we are now coming to terms that we all did some slightly weird or crazy shit to get through it. I am clearly in the camp that we should explore what that experience was like, and not ignore or deny what we went through. “Future Shock” is a welcome story to remind me that I also did obsess on a few things to get through it.

  • Best of 2022 – Short Story Review: “Wood Sorrel House” by Zach Williams

    (The short story “Wood Sorrel House,” by Zach Williams, Appeared in the March 21st, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I see spoilers!)

    I do not know what to make of this story. I haven’t stopped thinking about the thing since I finished reading it, but I still can’t come up with what it’s all about. And this is meant as a compliment. If a story lives on in the reader’s mind, and doesn’t dissolve into forgotten nothingness as soon as they are finished with it, then that author has achieved something. I tip my hat to you Zach Williams; your story is taking up space in my brain.

    “Wood Sorrel House” is about a couple and a toddler seemingly trapped in a cottage in the woods. Days pass, they age, but the toddler does not. Each morning food and supplies are replenished in the house, thus allowing them to live in the cottage. The couple tries to figure out where they are and why they are there, and soon they discover the toddler is never able to get hurt.

    I have an ego, and some days I think I am smart, and when I started reading this story, I was like, “Oh, this is an absurdist styled story, and it’s a metaphor for death.” Because, if my college education taught me anything, it’s that absurdist/surrealist/modernist stories are all really about death. But as I kept reading, I began to doubt my ego-driven conclusion. Why was the snapping turtle killed? What happed when the male in the couple disappeared? What happened to the toddler when the woman went down to the lake for days at a time? Why did the couple age, and get injured, but the toddler was immune and also ageless?

    I found that this story was taping into emotional territories that made me react. Perhaps it’s because I’m a parent, but I kept feeling this sense of dread for the toddler, that something awful was going to happen. There was a sense of disgust in how the man went out and destroyed nature. And a sense of sorrow as the woman tried to make sense of all of it. I was reacting to this story, I was compelled by it, but I couldn’t make sense of it. If it wasn’t about death, what was it about? Was it the lack of logic? Things stayed the same at the cottage, but the outside world seemed to keep moving; not changing into something different, but just moving along. Was this a metaphor for dealing with Covid? Maybe it had no meaning, but that would make it about death, right? What was it? Like I said, I don’t know what to think about the story, but the story is making me think about what it could be about. That’s a pretty successful story.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)

  • Best of 2022 – Short Story Review: “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid

    (The short story “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid appeared in the May 16th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (This story will be Spoiled!)

    I didn’t know I had been waiting for a story, but “The Face in the Mirror” by Mohsin Hamid was the story I had been waiting for. I thought I knew what I was getting, then I was surprised, then I felt ashamed that I had judged it, only to again think I knew where this story was going, only to arrive at an ending that was conclusive, but also left me pleasantly wondering what all of this meant. I love that feeling. It reminds me of being in a college English class, and we have just finished reading a story that we are all jazzed up about, and we can’t wait to discuss it, to see if someone else saw it the same way that I did.

    The story is about a white man, Anders, who wakes up one day to find that his skin color has changed to brown. Right off the bat, I thought I was about to get a modern retelling of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” Anders soon learns that this change is affecting other people in his city. Slowly, tensions start growing in this city. Anders goes to see his father, who has not changed and is still white. We learn that the father and Anders have a strained relationship, neither really coming to understand the other. Where the father was a construction foreman, a physically tough man, Anders never lived up to that standard. Though the father doesn’t understand or recognize his son, the father still loves and attempts to protect his child, by giving Anders a rifle to protect himself. Soon, society begins to break apart; militias form, people who have changed are now evicted, violence is everywhere. Anders has a confrontation at his apartment, an attempt to evict him, and though he stands his ground, he knows he has to leave. The only safe place is his father’s home, where he goes, and the two of them hole up together. Soon, it is clear that the father is dying, and Anders sees to it that he takes care of his father to the end. And at the funeral, the father is the only white person left, as all of the people attending are now brown skinned.

    First of all, much respect to Hamid for writing a story that was not easy to predict where it was going. Always a good sign. Second, there is so much to unpack. Was this a story about race? Clearly it was. Was this a story about how the paternal generation comes to not recognize and understand their children’s generation? Yes, that is also true. I think it was also about loving unconditionally. It was all of that, and it was great. I also like that after Anders goes through this change, society comes out on the other side, and everything starts to return back to normal. There was a menace in this story, a tension that I felt was going to explode, but the fact that it didn’t played well into the theme of the story. There were all of these things happening, which was bringing up questions in my mind, asking if this is how society would react to a change like that, or is our current society reacting this way because a great change is under way?

    I don’t know, but it is fun and challenging to ask and ponder these questions.

    But all of it was pulled together and held tightly by Hamid’s writing. His word choice, the flow of the sentences, and the use of repetition of a phrase in a sentence; it was enjoyable just to read this prose. I am now a fan of Mohsin Hamid. I feel like he was a friend, gently nudging me to ask questions, and look a little closer at the world around me.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)

  • Best of 2022 – Short Story Review: “Annunciation” by Lauren Groff

    (The short Story “Annunciation,” by Lauren Groff appeared in the February 14th & 21st, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    First of all, I am not related to Lauren Groff. Second, this is the first short story by her that I have read. And it was a good one to start with. From the first paragraph, I felt like I was on a journey, and was being guided by a person who knew how to unfold a story. If you haven’t pieced it together, I liked this story, and I am suggesting that you should read it. For that reason, I will forgo a synopsis of the piece, and give my reflections on it.

    Lauren Groff crafted a well-made short story. As it unfolded, I didn’t know where I was being taken, but after I finished, I could see the structure that held the story up. The opening, narrator development, introduction of characters, seemingly random incidents, rising action, climax, resolution, and even a denouement, which not too long ago I was complaining about the use of denouement in short stories. I mean, the title tied in to the denouement, as well. But the structure wasn’t the only admirable quality of the story.

    What I loved reading was about this narrator who was not perfect, who did struggle, and was still struggling. A person who had these moments, anecdotes even, that represented the life she led, and she still found herself thinking of these people, and the mysteries that never will be solved. And, this was a personal favorite of mine, the narrator was literary person without being a writer character. I fully believed that she was introspective, empathetic, and aware of the small details of the world she inhabited.

    But it was the theme, the through line, of motherhood that ran through the story that impressed me. Though I didn’t catch it as I was reading it, the denouement captured, and focused the theme for me. It made me reevaluate each of the women in the story, their form of motherhood, and how they are viewed or appreciated by their children for what they do, or have done for them. This theme of motherhood didn’t fit neatly in a box, meaning that I didn’t feel the story was trying to say motherhood is “this way.” Mothers are all over the map; good, bad, wonderful, awful, secretive, open, all different and yet the same, somehow. And for some, motherhood takes a toll.

    That makes the story sound dark or overtly complex, but I found myself optimistic, and hopeful at the end of the story. Lauren Groff created a journey in this story, so we all came out on the other side different from this experience. I liked the world that this story is in, and the characters who inhabit it. Stories like this leave me feeling inspired; that short stories can express truths, and have weight. That they are worth reading and creating.