Nice to get two new reviews before the year is out. Jim Ruland, author of Big Lonesome, included a mini review of WILD LIFE in this article at San Diego City Beat: Collections of Short Stories to Hang by The Fire With Care
“The most slender of the books assembled here—each story in Fish’s “collection of undomesticated flash fictions” is fewer than 600 words—Wild Life has teeth. Although you can read it from cover to cover in a few hours, there’s nothing slight about these slim fictions. These stories are culled from real life, making them all the more harrowing.
Quote: They discovered the baby in the grass, under the frantic cotton sheets. The clothesline spun and creaked throwing light, then shadow on his face, his wee head smooth and curved as a doorknob.”
Also reviewed are: VOLT (Alan Heathcock, Graywolf), MUSEUM OF THE WEIRD (Amelia Gray, Fiction Collective 2) MAGNIFICENT MISTAKES (Eric Bosse, Ravenna Press), TUND (Thor Garcia, Litteraria Pragencia) and AMPERSAND, MASS. (William Walsh, Keyhole Press). I’ve read Museum of the Weird, Magnificent Mistakes and Ampersand, Mass. and recommend all three highly.
Also, the great Roxane Gay reviewed Wild Life at Beyond the Margins. And says, among other kind things: “Fish does what the best writers of flash fiction hope to accomplish—she finds the most necessary moments, and reveals their complexity with an economy of language.” There, I’m also in good company with reviews for The Rest of the Story by Chris Tarry, Green Girl, by Kate Zambreno, Game of Secrets by Dawn Tripp, and the debut issue of Unstuck, which is excellent.
Latest posting during my month as Writer-in-Residence at Necessary Fiction: a reprint of a Robert Lopez story (originally appeared in Sententia), “Inconsequential, Oklahoma” and you can read it here: Robert Lopez story.