Tag: Short Stories

  • Short Story Review: “The Choc-Ice Woman” by Mary Costello

    (The short story “The Choc-Ice Woman” by Mary Costello appeared in the October 16th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Anna Morrison

    I love short stories, just in case you weren’t aware. It’s an art form that has an endless well-spring of inspiration and creativity due to the uniqueness of each and every author who attempts to create a story. And I also know that a story can be well written and honest, and at the same time, not be my cup of tea. It is not the fault of the author or the story, as I feel I can objectively read a story, understand and appreciate its qualities, and also know that the story isn’t for me.

    “The Choc-Ice Woman” by Mary Costello is a good story. It’s well written, honest, smart, pulls in many different ideas, synthesizing them into a cohesive through line, which arrives at a conclusion that is satisfying for what the story was attempting to accomplish. But the story didn’t resonate with me, when I felt that it should have.

    I spent time contemplating this, even re-read the story, and I can’t fault Costello or the piece. Perhaps it is a tad long (I’ll talk about that in a minute) but it never felt like the story was wasting my time. Which has led me to believe that the fault lies with my stars, and not the piece or the author. Thus I am feeling disappointed in myself.

    “The Choc-Ice Woman” deals with failure, infidelity, loss, death, even love, forgiveness and acceptance. All good themes when it comes to a short story, and it should be read, which is why I am recommending it. The story is structured with a present timeline which is interspersed with flashbacks, thoughts and insights of past events and characters thus building up the dramatic tension of the present timeline. This structure is handled smartly and works effectively. There is a strong feeling of pathos and loss in the story that never overwhelms the narrative, no wallowing here, but felt more like the melancholy that it is to be an adult who has made decisions in life; where regret is never too far away.

    And still I felt detached from it all, but that’s on me, and I can admit that.

    (The last thing that I do want to say about the piece is that it does take it’s time, and I like that Costello did that. I have a very bad feeling that if a student, or member of a writer’s workshop, had brought this in, it would be critiqued to death for being too long. I would like to stand up and say that writers should take their time, and not rush things. I feel short fiction is being done to death with “cutting to the chase,” or eliminating all details for the sake of making stories move faster – as if speed of narrative makes your writing better. Or simplifying down to the edge nothingness is more meaningful – sometimes less is actually less. Have courage writers! Be not afraid to write more and take your time!)

  • Short Story Review: “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao (Translated from the Chinese, by Jeremy Tiang.)

    (The short story “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao appeared in the October 9th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Sally Deng

    If you write a story about a parent/child relationship, and then throw in a dying parent, you pretty much are half way to claiming a small place in my heart. My logically analytical side gets thrown out the window, and I am running on emotions. And let’s be honest, if you’re creating art, you want people to have an emotional reaction – it’s like the whole point. I say this because I can be completely biased when it comes to certain subject matters, which can complicate things when I try to review short stories from an objective place.

    Which is why it’s strange for me to say that I didn’t feel an emotional connection to “Heart” by Shuang Xuetao. This is a fine story, well written, engaging, and just odd enough to keep me intrigued with what was happening. And as I was reading this piece, I kept expecting it to “click” into place and tap that raw parent/child emotion in me, but it never came. But I don’t begrudge the story for this, nor am I left feeling that the story “misfired” in its execution. Oddly, I feel this might have been exactly the reaction the story was attempting to create in the reader.

    The story mainly takes places on a medical bus that is driving late at night to Beijing. The passengers are an older man dying of heart disease, his son, a driver, and ER doctor who agreed to accompany the father and son. We learn from the narrator, who is the son, that the heart disease that is killing his father skips every other generation, meaning the son is immune from the fate of his father.

    The tone of the story is straightforward, logical, and there are no literary flourishes. But the events in this story slightly graze the edge of surrealism – just slightly. It’s enough touches to make the story feel that it’s not completely in reality. But still I had to wonder why these touches were there. What did the father’s daily boxing routine really symbolize? Why was the driver sleeping as he drove the vehicle? Also, what about the doctor’s sleeping? Was this all a dream? And the need for the son to have to use the bathroom? Was there a meaning to the son’s self-described laziness and his recent decision to stop working, while the father worked every day; even when he retired, he went and found a new job to keep working? All of these questions left me feeling uncertain, unsettled, and wondering what I was supposed to make of this?

    And then there is a moment in the story where the son wonders what he is supposed to do when his father does pass away. He thinks of all the work that will come with making the arrangements for a funeral; contacting family and people his father worked with, raising money to pay for it all, and cars for the procession. Then the son thinks that once his father is gone, that he will truly be alone and by himself. To that the narrator says, “I guess that’s what freedom looks like nowadays,…” A sobering, and heartbreaking realization, that can also feel overwhelming to the point where one can be left numb, and disconnected.

    There isn’t one way to mourn, and that’s what “Heart” reminded me of. I don’t know what all of these pieces in this story amounted to, but I don’t think Shuang Xuetao is wrong for presenting that either, if that was the intention. Maybe not having a feeling right away is still a sort of feeling. Maybe.

  • Short Story Review: “ProCess” by Abigail E. Myers

    (The short story “ProCess” by Abigail E. Myers appeared on September 26th, 2023 in Rejection Letters.)

    image: MM Kaufman

    I remember how when I was a kid, I was told in school that technology, someday, would solve all our problems, thus making the world a better and perfect place. My dad, when he was a kid in the 50’s, was told how there would be flying cars in 1980. Yeah, that never happened, but we sure did get loads of new tech which has changed the world – just no flying cars. Sometimes I think the real role of technology is to create new problems while solving old problems. The things that annoy us, will still annoy us, just not as much.

    I feel that was the starting point with “ProCess” by Abigail E. Myers, a tight, efficient and humorous flash fiction piece in the form of a rejection letter. The rejection letter is from the App Store, informing the developer that their new app, “ProCess: The App for Funeral Processions” will not be accepted, with a suggestion of next steps for the developer.

    What I enjoyed most with Myer’s piece was its full commitment to the flash form. Yes, the work is short, but this isn’t a short-short story; This isn’t an uber-condensed form of a hero cycle, or a quick character study. This is flash fiction in the form I like to see; quirky, unconventional, but a story that still moves from a starting point to an ending point, firmly rooted in honesty.

    The quirkiness is apparent by this app for funeral processions, and it’s unconventional in the form of a rejection letter, but what I was most impressed with was how Myer’s moved the story forward. The building and movement of the piece is accomplished in the three bullet points which use syntax and formatting of the text to accomplish this goal. The first point is formatted normally with no additions, but in the second point, italicized letters are used to highlight the developers thoughts. By the third point, the italicized and normal formatting seems to have been reversed, implying an urgency and irratition toward the situation. It’s an effective choice that I didn’t notice on my first reading, but I felt its implication immediately. It causes the narrative to move towards a conclusion, which is the app store stating, “all must yield.”

    I admit that I am thinking very hard about a very short flash fiction piece. Yet, when someone accomplish the feat of executing a very good story, in what I think is a great example of what makes flash fiction an original form of literature, it should be applauded. “ProCess” makes its point on how some situations cannot be avoided, even with technology, and that’s just life. A complete, honest thought, that rings true.

  • Post #1001

    Yesterday, I wrote my 1,000th blog post.

    When I started posting way back in 2017, I was a new father who was working a very stressful job, and I needed a creative outlet of some sort to keep me sane, and also to make me feel like I wasn’t giving up on me. The goal way back then was to write 250 words about a subject; any subject would do, just as long as I wrote 250 words.

    In that first year, I did a grand total of 11 posts.

    Followed by 105 posts in 2018.

    Then I backslid in 2019 with 67.

    But I came back in 2020 with 143 post. Sure, COVID and being unemployed played a big part in my increase in output.

    All in all, I have written 339,000+ words for this blog, and I have kept my sanity by being able to accomplish something each day. I like to think I am being creative still, and clearly a good number of you come by to read the short story reviews, which I appreciate.

    I also appreciate the solid core of early followers; all five of you – two of whom I do know personally – who took the time to read and like what I was doing.

    I didn’t know what I was doing when I started; I still don’t know what I’m doing, and I probably won’t know what I am doing when all is said and done.

    I am also aware that virtually no one will read this, and most likely I’m just talking to myself here. For that matter, I should rewrite my bio, and do a site redesign… I need new pictures, too.

    I don’t say this enough, but you should “like” my blog, and follow it. Also, you should leave comments, and click on the ads.

    While we’re at it, someone should offer me a job – writing reviews or editing at journal. To be honest, someone should publish my stories and offer me a book deal.

    But for the time being, I’m going back to reading some flash fiction (I’m really enjoying SmokeLong Quarterly currently) and crank out some new pieces.

  • Short Story Review: “The Narrow Way” by Liliana Colanzi (Translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews.)

    (The short story “The Narrow Way” by Liliana Colanzi appeared in the September 25th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Do I even need to say SPOILERS?)

    Photograph by William Mebane for The New Yorker

    Liliana Colanzi pretty much nails it in the first four paragraphs of her story “The Narrow Way.” We come to understand that the Devil is real to these characters, that the Reverend holds power over this community, that the protagonist and her sister have an uncomfortable close relationship, and if you leave this community then you leave for good. Everything that follows in this engrossing story relates back to these four paragraphs, thus creating a structure for this world to exist in, leaving us to see how these characters function in it. This set up, which is what it is, was handled so subtly and with a lite touch, that jaded me didn’t pick up on it until I reached the end of the story.

    There were many aspects that I enjoyed in this piece, but I really want to look at the format/structure that Colanzi used to accomplish her story. First was making the reader slightly uncomfortable with the sisters game of “cows and calves” in the third paragraph – somethings not right with these people as they don’t seem innocent, but ignorant to the changes that are happening to them. Clearly the children of the colony are maturing into puberty, but without any guidance due to the “narrow way” that their religion demands, they go blindly forward, stumbling into these changes. And then with the fourth paragraph, we know that this “colony” is a place of repression and control. Everything that follows next in the story is filtered through these two notions, making the rest of the narrative always feel uneasy, and with a threat of violence. As the story unfolds with each new section, this ignorance and violence continue to be heightened, building to the climax.

    And if one criticism must be laid on this story, it is the climax. When I was first reading the story, I was caught up with the narrative, the language, tone, mood, all of it, so the climax felt correct. When I thought back on the story, it became clear that there were only really two outcomes for this story; escape, or death. The idea that this colony would be destroyed or overthrown by its residents is never entertained by any of its characters, so it never was a narrative option to begin with. I understand that escape and death were foreshadowed by Colanzi from the relative start of the story, but… When you tell a story about repression, isn’t the release into freedom, either through escaping or death, the only stratifying options on the table?

    That having been said, “The Narrow Way” is a very good story – built well, written well, and encompassing a very specific world. This is not a place I want to live, as it’s a repressive and disquieting environment. Yet, there is a very honest humanity in this story that is compelling, and makes one yearn for people to be free.