"Flash Fiction Festival two" (AdHoc fiction, 2018)

The "Prose Poetry" pieces seemed a bit prosey to me.

There are notes by the authors at the end, which help with the Historical pieces (I missed the allusions). The notes for “Oh baby” (my favourite piece in the book) say that it began from an exercise where story had to have 3 viewpoints.

Typo on p.11 - "agreemenct"

"The truth about you" by Susan Lewis

The main character, Lainey, is married to Tom, a successful writer whose books are adapted for TV. She's his PA. When she met him he was married, already a father (14 years older than her). Her Italian mother Alessandra died a year before - she came to England when Lainey was a month old. No Italian relatives had ever been in touch. Her father lives with them. He's senile. They have a dog who'll soon need putting down. They have a daughter Tierey (15, with advanced friends, one of whom, Sky, likes Max) and a son Sav. She collects her step-son Max, 21, from the police station (drunk shop-lifting). They argue, he saying that she destroyed his family. It seems more of an info-dump than an argument. Surely they've discussed this issue before.

She's booked a villa in Italy for the family and friends so she can do some family-tree research.

Stacey has a new man in her life, Martin, having divorced Derek. She's coming to Italy. She seems too peripheral character. Tom's agent Nadia, 49, is with Guy, a much younger man.

Tom reveals that he has another daughter, Julia, who's 16. Her mother Kirsten, a TV presenter, has cancer and wants Tom with her. Tom wants to tell Lainey that he's only known about Julia for a couple of month but is repeatedly (unconvincingly) interrupted. Also, it's odd that he doesn't say that Julia has Downe's syndrome. These info-delays seem merely for the sake of generatingly fake tension.

Tierey has secret lover, much older than her who wanted her to read 50 Shades of Grey before having sex for the first time on her 16th birthday. It emerges that her lover is Guy. Why are we kept in the dark about this? He photographs her compromisingly.

Most of the characters go to Italy. Sky and Max are shag-buddies. They meet Marco (whose English wife left a year before for a man, then changed her mind), whose old relatives help with the local history. He consults the record office. It seems that Lainey was the result of a rape - maybe with a priest. Or maybe she was the result of incest. Grandparents are alive - one of them in a dementia home - but Lainey doesn't want to meet them. Why not?

When Tierey tells Max about Tom, he's livid and flies to England to tell Nadia about it. Double standards? Tierey flies back to her father and they return to Italy together.

Lainey meets Kirsten and Julia who move in. At the end there's a funeral. Again, we're not initially told a detail (that it's Peter's funeral). Lainey seems unaffected. Kirsten's health is worse. Lainey's prepared to look after Julia.

Other reviews

• goodreads

"Things we say in the dark" by Kirsty Logan (Vintage, 2019)

20 stories (from Banshee, Copper Nickel, etc) in 3 sections There's running text between the stories. Some of the fears in the sequences were independently published.

Home

• Last one to leave please turn off the lights - prefaced by a note saying that the author wrote the book in an isolated Icelandic retreat. It has a section for each of 4 fears - First: making houses out of a tooth, hair, fingernails, then any other spare parts. Second: finding a flat unpleasant and wearing a dolls house over her head. Third: having a baby to solve agoraphobia - “She needed to be able to touch the sides of her world“ - the grown child bricking her in. Fourth: clearing her grandfather's house out, spreading his ashes which are gold flakes that cover the items in his house so it's difficult to leave.
• Things my wife and I found hidden in our house - She and wife Alice move into the house of Alice’s late gran. They find various kelpie-related objects
• My house is out where the lights end - She visits the farmyard where she grew up. It's abandoned. Each room stirs memories, though she doesn't go down to the cellar - "she's not a f**king moron". Her father told her that Nature is dangerous. He sang to the sunflowers. She digs under a crucifix that was a scarecrow, finding teeth, hair and bones.
• Sleep, you black-eyed pig, fall into a deep pit of ghosts - Ellen visits friend Jeanette in her new, isolated Finland house. In the night there are rumoured to be creatures that surround people. Jeanette lives with Ash, destroying Ellen's hopes. Ellen waits in the night. (No)
• Girls are always hungry when all men are bite-size - The pre-story text says "My wife is not my first reader any more ... She hasn't heard anything I've said for a long time". A mother dresses up her daughter Ellie in Victorian clothes to lead a seance. This time a hot guy is opposite her. We switch to his PoV - he's there to expose her tricks. Cherries appear from thin air. He pays for private sessions. Each time the house seems smaller. He can't discover the tricks, even when he gets her to sit on his lap in her underwear. Even a full cavity investigation reveals nothing. At the end Ellie regains control "I swallow him in one go. he doesn't even touch the sides of my throat ... Around me the house falls silent". (The best piece yet)
• Birds fell from the sky and each one spoke in your voice - Sidney's old house was burnt down. He's the first resident in a new estate. He fusses with curtains. He sees his reflection in the night window. His shop sells things from 1990 to 1999. A man comes in asking for an old Nokia. The shop has no phones. Sidney's little brother was stolen from the baby sitter's house. The family had been given a phone to receive tip-offs from the public. The man comes into the shop again, talking about phones that have contacted the dead. Next time he comes in, Sidney gives him an old phone. Sidney had hidden from the baby-stealer behind curtains. (I like this too)
• The city is full of opportunities and full of dogs - She lives in Spain, working as head librarian in a library with no other workers and no books. There's an empty glass case which one day will contain the body of a famous writer. She speaks poor Spanish. She wakes in the mornings with smudges on her skin. Dogs and men follow her. One morning everyone has gone.

The child

• My body cannot forget your body - The pretext says that the narrator and her wife tried for a baby. She's scared of babies. The story has a section for each of 4 fears - First: Her stretching stomach cracks open. It's stitched shut. A little finger appears. It's stitched shut again. Second: A baby can be born in many parts - several pieces of fruit for example. Third: a baby born with no skin. A baby made of glass. Fourth: Milk is poured into Colette. She has 12 babies. She's inseminated with petals, then diamonds. More babies. Alison is inseminated with green milk, then teeth, then livers. Alison only loves the final baby.
• Stranger blood is sweeter - Sarah wonders where Juno goes in the night. She wakes with bruises. One night she follows her to a place where women fight. Sarah asks Juno why she watches and fights. She doesn't say. Next night when Juno sneaks out, Sarah follows - "She goes out into the shadows and she find the thing she wants. She fights it. And she f**ks it. And she eats it."
• Good good good, nice nice nice - War has been over for 2 years. Sabrina collects pods - like mermaids purses. She opens one. A baby is inside. It will become a soldier. She has a 10 month old baby at home, Jamie, who is always crying. She shuts him up with whisky. One night she takes Jamie to the pods. She finds an empty one.
• The only time I think of you is all the time - The narrator's mother died young. Brigitte is a presence, a ghost. The narrator can only escape her by dipping in the dirty garden pond. It's such a relief. She holds herself underwater. That's how her mother died.
• We can make something grow between the mushrooms and the snow - Richard and Caroline make notes about houses - one made of mushrooms (where she got pregnant), in a wood, a cave, bird house, island, and finally on a glacier (which she likes)
• Half sick of shadows - Parents and a child visit a theme park. They leave the child behind. Back at the car, they wonder why the car-park is strewn with dolls. (No)
• The only thing I can't tell you is why - Thomasin has given birth. She repeatedly thinks that the baby is dead though he cries, feeds, etc. Her husband does much of the childcare. At the playground she tells other mothers that their children are dead. She watches her son go to university, marry, buy a house, knowing all the while that he's dead (No)

The past

• I'll eat you up I love you so - The pre-text says that there was a baby but there isn't now. Nor is there a house or wife any more. The past is consoling. The story has a section for each of 4 fears - First: While Evangeline was pregnant with the male narrator she replaced the photos in the house by symbols of transformation. Then for the narrator's sake she ate insects that symbolised transformation. After the boy was bullied at school, insects helped the wounds heal. Then insects ate the boy to feed their own young. Second: Clarice was made to eat a gold apple each day by her child-carer, Mrs Dainty. After being twice widowed, Clarice changed her name to Mrs Dainty. She becomes a child-carer. She gives the child wax ball wrapped in gold. Third: Veronica is pregnant. Her husband's a doctor. She eats horsehair, giving birth to Seth and a hairball, Tawny. She preferred Tawny to leaky, smell Seth. Seth plugged his orifices with bits of Tawny until his mother liked him. But he missed Tawny. Fourth: a child's so cute it's eaten by relatives.
• The world's more full of weeping than you can understand - Mostly footnotes. Dorothy sees a show on a pier where a woman's cut in half and not put back together.
• Sleep long, sleep tight, it is best to wake up late - A questionnaire about sleep and night panics
• Exquisite corpse - Delilah puts make-up on stationary Stokeley. Stokeley wants to reciprocate but Delilah does herself while they do magazine questionnaires together. They visit an museum of statues with real hair from corpses. When Stokeley was 10, her mother died after being in a coma for 2 months, her hairs still growing. Her father's faeces stink the house. She doesn't want hair. She thinks of Snow White in her glass coffin. She plays at vampires with her friends. During a sleepover Stokeley's friends see she's not breathing. They call her father. One of them revives her.
• Sweeter than the tongue I remember - In the pretext she loses track of time in Iceland. In the story, she's single, vividly dreaming of men. She tried to avoid sleep when the sex became non-censensual. Her friend recommends a doctor who dates her and takes her home for sex. She moves in. While he's out, her dream man knocks at the door.
• Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by - Drunk, she's snatched by a man and driven away. She wakes in a well. He hoses her to clean her of mud and drugs, and takes her to his house every so often. Having learnt not to be submissive, she eventually gives up fighting. One day he lets her go. He has to push her out of the kitchen. She tries to flag down cars. They avoid her. Eventually a car stops. It's him. She gets in.

I liked it more than I expected. The pieces weren't too long for me, and there were sufficient ideas to hold my interest (e.g. the glass coffin for the famous author) even when the story as a whole didn't grab me. Among the themes is querying the significance that should be attached to dreams and other non-conscious experiences.

Other reviews

• Suzi Feay (Stories can be brief and impressionistic, leaving the reader with a nagging lack of closure)
• Roger Cox

"Though the bodies fall" by Noel O'Regan

An audio book.

Mihall (Mick) lives in an isolated cliff-top cottage in Ireland, with his dog Sammy. He's a birdspotter and ship-spotter, keeping logbooks. His mother had died 10 year before. His parents moved there when he was 6. He has sisters Onya and Shesia. His parents had looked after "the visitors", telling Mihall to distract his younger sisters while they were doing so. When his father died, Mihall, 12, took over his father's role. The visitors are those who've wandered out, contemplating suicide.

Onya phones to say she's going to visit - she wants to discuss something. She hasn't been back for a decade. She was a childhood friend of Brenda, who runs a general store in the local village.

Onya says that she and Shesia want to sell up. She tells him that Nadine (an ex-girlfriend?) is engaged.

The narrative flips between the current timeline and the past. His mother was devoted to saving the visitors. She told Mihall he must keep secret about it - like being Clark Kent. He'd left though, for university. He liked sport and get Nadine, a national level rower. They lived together for a year before Mihall was brave enough to take her home. They argued, made up. Later she had a career-wrecking accident. They married. Poor, they moved into the now empty cottage. She got pregnant. He hadn't told her about the visitors. They spooked her. She miscarried and left him.

He refuses to sell the house. Onya says his devoted to the visitors is a way to avoid real life. At a party when with Brenda and Mihall she reveals to Mihall that Brenda has always fancied him, and told Brenda that Nadine had been pregnant. Shesia returns after years. She tells him that she'd tried suicide in their bathroom once.

He has a heart attack and calls for an ambulance. While waiting, he decides to sell the house for his own good. He's found out the Brenda's recently divorced and wonders whether he could rent a room from her.

Other reviews

• Colette Sheridan (What Micheál fails to understand is why [his mother] Aideen decided to give all the love she had to the visitors rather than her children. And that is something this reviewer grappled with. Although this is a fine novel, the mother figure is somewhat elusive, difficult to grasp, not fully credible.)
• Lucy Popescu

"the lobsters run free (bath flash fiction 2)" (Ad Hoc, 2017)

135 pieces out of the 2,500+ entries sent in for the year's competitions, with various judges. Nothing bland or minimalist - if I don't always get what's going on, it's often because there's too much going on. I couldn't read many of them at a time without needing a break.

I like "I spy a boy", though in the final sentence - "I spy him by her grave, choking back sighs of relief" - I'm not sure there should be such ambiguity about who is the subject of "choking". I most like "Treading water", "Empty your attic", "Homesick" and "The true cost of carpeting Luxembourg". I don't get "Arthur Mee's Children Encyclopaedia" or "Forty-Nine". "Dropping the keys" might be ingenious.

On p.73 there's "Hayley perfect in her skirt said a good job was there otherwise who knows what would have happened". Is "I" missing between "job" and "was"?

"The bequest" by Joanna Margaret

An audio book.

In the prolog a women on a clifftop is approached by someone who knows her, and is pushed off.

Isobel from Boston (the first-person PoV, 23 years old - it's 2006) arrives at St Andrews to start her history PhD. She has a secret. She learns that her female supervisor, Granchier, died the week before so Endercot is taking over. At a Meet and Greet she meets various students (Catriona, Sean, etc) and staff (William, who she fancies) - working out the couples, discoveries the grudges (sexual, academic) people had against Granchier.

Charles, her landlord, says that Chanchier wasn't liked and that an old book had disappeared from the library. She's chosen the university partly because Rose (2 years older than her - they were friends as undergraduates).

She wants to study the covert influence of women in medieval times. She'd left Adrian (who was married), taking drugs to get over him, drugs which she stopped using when she arrived at St Andrews.

Rose's father left when she was 12. Her mother died when she was 16. She confesses to getting in with the wrong crowd. She doesn't want to go into details. She has a lot of money.

Rose disappears. A suicide notes is found. Police are called in. But Isobel has contact with her. Rose says it's vital that the Falcone Emerald is found, otherwise lives are at risk. She goes to Italy to search through documents for clues. William suddenly appears, which doesn't surprise her. Catriona is found dead. Sean doesn't overwhelmed by the news,

William and Isobel sleep together. He says that he and Rose started an affair 7 years before. Von Keiserling (a rich academic) had promised them big money if they found the Emerald. An Emerald was found - it was fake, which had angered von Keiserling, who'd caused Catriona to be killed, as a warning. Rose is in hiding, pregnant.

William and Isobel go to a Scottish island. When William's away, Rose meets Isobel, says that William's a psychopath and that they should get away. Rose locks Isobel in an out-house. William saves her, says that Rose killed Catriona and wanted to kill her.

Rose survives, ends up in a psychiatric clinic.

Lots of convincing historical details from over 400 years ago - double agents, etc. I sought connections between the historical story and the novel's plot.

Other reviews

• goodreads
• kirkusreviews (a less robust Da Vinci Code, less complex The Swan Thieves)
• ahistroyofcrows (a Dark Academia, but not a very good one ... The main character, Isabel, is very flat, and I can’t even speak about development because this is the type of character that isn’t fully constructed in the first place, so you can’t expect development and growth when you didn’t even get a three-dimensional character. ... a lot of her choices and actions, even after discovering things that are “bad”, are just not very believable. ... One thing I do wish was more developed is the fact that Isabel stops taking medication for mental health issues, and at first it seems like this will create a scenario of paranoia, fear, and descent into madness in the sense of “is this really happening” or “is this real” that is so prominent in gothic writing, but sadly this is just one of many aspects that end up being overlooked in the grand scheme of the novel. ... some things are just included that just don’t really add up to the story, for example, the past and a previous relationship the MC had with a married professor, don’t seem to add up to anything in the grand scheme of things, as well as an out of the blue and totally unrelated to the story scene of attempted sexual assault. I was taken by surprise by that scene, and it felt very disconnected from the rest of the book)

“The collected stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle” by T. Coraghessan Boyle (Granta, 1993)

Over 600 pages of stories from Antaeus, Fiction, Granta, Harper's, Paris Review, Playboy, etc

Descent of man

• Descent of man - Jackson Horne's partner Jane Good leaves him for a cultured ape, Konrad, who lives at the primate research lab where she works. Cuckolds are called horns, and Tarzan's friend was Jane, but I couldn't work out why the lab director's called Mr U-Hwak-Lo
• The champ - a food-eating contest is described as if it were a heavyweight boxing bout.
• We are Norsemen - The narrator's a Viking war poet. They go to America and find nothing useful. They go to Ireland and ransack a religious settlement. The poet's puzzled by a monk's reverence for a book, and burns it.
• Heart of a champion - "We" are the audience watching a Lassie episode that doesn't turn out well.
• Bloodfall - It rains blood. A house of party-goers wonder what to do. A flood begins. The rain stops. It all rots brown.
• The second swimming - Mao has his hair cut. A peasant, healed by a person following Mao's wise words, wants to give Mao a present of a pig, in person. A male table-tennis player whose wife cheated on him is told by her that it was because of Mao. Mao suddenly decides he wants to swim. The threads meet at the end.
• Dada - for the 2nd international Dada fair, 57 years after the 1st, an organiser gets Idi Amin ("Big Daddy") to attend, hinting that she'd become his 5th wife.
• A women’s restaurant -a man wonders about a women-only restaurant - its clients and menus. He tries to get in. He cross-dresses and succeeds, only to be thrown out. He considers surgery.
• The extinction tales - various episodes on the theme of extinction - a grieving lighthouse keeper finding a thought-extinct bird, the last passenger pigeon, etc.
• Caye - On an island of 300 people, Orlando's uncle has 32 kids, some now parents. He's shot dead and the narrator moves into his house with Ida.
• The big garage - B.'s car breaks down. He's given a tow to a giant, isolated garage/filling-station - thousands of cars; the filling station staffed by 8 girls in majorette outfits. He has to fill in long forms to progress, meeting people who's been overnighting there for days waiting for their cars to be mended. He tries and fails to escape.
• Green hell - A plane crashes in a jungle. 8 survive - a prof, a mime artist, etc., and lots of expensive cats with their carer. The pilot takes command. The carer leaves, finding a tribe who kill 2 of the survivors for him. The rest leave the camp. They're killed too, except for the narrator who's led back to civilisation and is keen to tell his story on TV.
• Earth, moon - While an astronaut is on the moon, his wife is struggling in a decaying house. When he returns he starts putting things right. He feels his waxen wings melting.
• Quetzalcoatl Lite - A rich collector tells of his quest to find Aztec beercans. He, his wife and his rival/friend Perdoo had gone on the trip. There was a fight about an unearthed can which turned out to be a Budweiser. He's by the rest of them, arrested, then is angry until Perdoo suggests that there's a beer brewed by Sherpas.
• De Rerum Natura - The inventor's operating on a sow, extracting from its womb a baby - his son, though he's infertile. He'd developed a cat that didn't defecate/urinate - it had made him rich. He invented a way of converting scrap metal to steak. His son developed pig features. The inventor became a recluse, displayed slides of a dead god. His house was set alight.
• John Barleycorn lives - A reporter is in a bar when a religious woman comes in, wrecking the place with an axe. He publishes an article against her type. 200 women barricade the newspaper's offices. He finds her first husband in a seedy hostel, and hires him to scare her away.
• Drowning - A young woman bathes nude on a deserted beach, falling asleep. She had modelled nude for fellow students, knowing the effect she'd have on them. 500 yards away, a bearded man walks into the sea. A fat boy, 23, watches her from a dune. Teased, he's become a loner. He strips, approaches the girl, and aggressively rapes her. Fishermen chase him off. He runs into the sea. A fisherman rapes her. The bearded man drowns. The fat boy gets home ashamed, but also excited that he's no longer a virgin. The fishermen go home. The girl is hospitalised.

Greasy lake

• Greasy lake - 3 19 y.o. boys, slightly drugged and drunk, stop by a lake to tease a couple having sex. The man is aggressive. One of the boys kills him. More men arrive. The boys flee. One of them swims in the lake, finds a corpse. The man smash up the car and leave. The boys return. 2 young drugged girls appear, asking if they want to party. They drive off.
• Caviar - The narrator inherits his father's fishing business. He and his wife Marie try various quack remedies to childlessness. They hire a surrogate mother, Wendy, a 1st year med student, via Dr Sizz. Wendy moves in. After artificial insemenation, they have an affair. Wendy moves out, has a child, which she gives to Marie. But the narrator wants to marry Wendy. He goes to her hour and finds Sizz living there. She tells the narrator that they belong to different classes. He assaults Sizz, winds down by fishing. He catches a 6ft sturgeon, dissects it with the skill of a doctor, and finds 50 pounds of roe.
  [The most conventional story so far!]
• Ike and Nina - The narrator, working in Eisenhower's team, helped him have a few private hours with Kruschov's wife (they'd been infatiated for years) during Kruschov's visit to the States. The narrator (subsequently an academic) suspects that Kruschov found out, hence his change of diplomatic stance.
• Rupert Beersley and the beggar master of Sivani-Hoota - The narrator is a Watson-like companion to Beersley, who's called in to find out how the Nawab's 25 children are disappearing one by one. He accuses the wrong person and returns home. In fact, a fake wise man (who has a group of beggars in town) has taken them.
• On for the long haul - Bayard moves to an isolated farm with his family because he's scared of nuclear war. He thinks a violent psychopath, also fearing war/anarchy has moved into a nearby farm. He buys two rabbits for his kids. Coming back to his farm one day he sees the rabbits strung up, dead. He confronts his neighbour with a gun but he's not good with guns.
  [Another conventional story that seems rather average]
• The Hector Quesadilla story - An old baseball player continues so long that his son Hector Jr is old enough to be doing a PhD - literature. Hector's in a game that lasts ages - maybe forever - while his family watches.
• Whales weep - When 31, a male fashion journalist suddenly wants to see/touch whales. When, in a raft with a woman, he witnesses a whale rape, he finds himself naked. Maybe sex happens. Soon after, the woman broke up with her partner.
• The new moon party - a presidential candidate who's not doing well starts promising that he'll create a new moon. He gets in for 2 terms. When the bright side of the new moon is turned to the Earth it provokes a sex fever. After a week or so the moon is destroyed with a nuclear weapon and he has to resign.
• Not a leg to stand on - Calvin, wheelchaired, is staying with daughter Jewel and her 2 adult sons. They drink, have 3 TVs, etc. A german shop-owner woman accuses them of stealing soda. His other daughter tells him he should move to an old people's home. The shop gets trashed. Calvin discovers in the house a storeroom of stolen goods. He goes to the german woman, says sorry, but doesn't offer to provide evidence.
• Stones in my passway, hellbound on my trail - Dallas, 1938. A penniless blues singer is performing at a cheap event/party. He thinks back to a chance he had to make a record. He blew it - got drunk and lost his guitar on the way.
• All shook up - Patrick (29, a guidance councillor. His wife left him for another man) watches new neighbours move in - early 20s with a baby. The man's a budding Elvis impersonator. His wife (Cindy) tells Patrick that she'd had to marry. Cindy and Patrick start watching her husband's first, disastrous gig then leave early to make love. Young Elvis immediately discovers, and next day chucks his wife and kid out. She wants to move in with Patrick. He gets a phone call from his wife, who says she's made a big mistakes and wants to return. He says she can.
• A bird in hand - 1980. Worried that the arrival of 10 million starlings is a health hazard, Egon hired a man to play bird-distress sounds, then another to spray detergent from a helicopter and fire-engines. His wife Mai isn't happy - the birds will leave anyway. He starts chopping down trees. 1890. A rich US man dreams of importing all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. After years of failure, one species seems to be surviving - starlings.
• Two ships - Jack (the narrator) and Casper had been anti-bourgeois school friends. Casper went to join the Army, planning to undermine it, became unhinged. Jack married Erica. Casper sent him long, long poems but they hadn't met for years until Casper returns home unannounced. He visits Jack. Jack starts packing.
• Rara avis - A strange bird - a stork? an eagle? - appears on a shop roof. Crowds gather. 6 weeks before, the narrator had been playing in an abandoned house with friends, doing naughty things. There was a fire and Janine died. The crowd begins to disperse. The narrator notices a red gash where the bird's legs meet and throws the first stone.
• The overcoat II - Akaky (mid-30s, single) is a loyal USSR citizen. He's made fun of at work because of his overcoat. He gets a new one from a tailor. His comrades begin to respect him - at last he's using the blackmarket. A colleague invites him to a dinner party for the first time, which he enjoys. On the walk home through Red Square his coat's stolen. He reports the incident, spending hours in the police station. His coat is shown to him. It was made in Hong Kong. He's fined, and the coat isn't returned. In the cold he gets ill and dies. Nobody misses him. The detective who wears the coat is mistaken for the First Secretary.

If the river was whiskey

• Sorry Fugu - A male restaurant owner wants to be reviewed by the tough one, Willa Frank, not the soft one. Willa appears with her usual eating partner. The owner isolates her, asks her why she eats with a slob. The owner cooks slobby food for him. Her favourite food is fugu - blowfish. It can kill.
• Modern love - He's 33. He starts going out with Breda. They take it slowly. She fears infection. She likes talking about tropical diseases. When they make love she insists that they both wear full body condoms. Then she insists that he has a full health check. She finally rejects him because he works for a shoe company, and feet are unhygenic.
• Hard sell - An image consultant has been flown in from the States to help the Ayatollah. The local interpreter isn't faithfully translating (perhaps to save the consultant's life). The consultant gets a US interpreter flown over. The consultant suggests getting rid of the beard and robe, and getting into baseball. The new interpreter's strong accent stops the consultant understanding the replies until it's too late.
• Peace of mind - Giselle sells domestic security systems by visiting people and scaring them with stories. A couple who buy are criticized by friends because of the cost and the fortress mentality. Giselle is scared by a customer who makes her stay for hours.
• Sinking house - When a wife's husband dies she switches on all the faucets and garden sprinklers. After 2 weeks the neighbours' garden is soaked. They ask that she turns things off. She doesn't. They get the police to turn it off. The female neighbour thinks she might switch all her water appliances on if she became a widow - but not for long because that would weaken her foundations.
• The human fly - "The human fly" asks an agent to represent him. He hangs off a skyscraper for a week or so, then on a DC-10 wing, then the axle of a lorry. He's gaining lots of publicity. The agent feels guilty about getting rich from a man risking his life, but the Fly is unstoppable. He tries to motorcycle over 26 trucks, and dies. The agent makes money from a TV cartoon series.
• The hat - Michael, 31, is one of 27 permanent (misfit) inhabitants of a mountain retreat run by Marshall, mid-forties. They both sometimes sleep with the young widowed barmaid, Jill, who has an 8 y.o. son. Boo (mid-forties) arrives with 2 men to kill a rogue bear. Xmas arrives, so do tourists and regular visitor Regina, who sleeps around. Michael is jealous of Boo's success with Jill. He hosts a New Year's Party where several people sleep (not him) around. The bear is killed. He later finds a hat which Regina claimed was valuable and stolen. It's cheap. He burns it.
• Me Cago en la Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua) - Robert (see - "for whom the bell tolls"), 28, raised in Montana, is on a mission to blow up a US plane. He crosses the Horduran border with a few locals. He blows the plane up, with help, but his surprising lack of horsemanship means that he doesn't escape.
• The little chill - It's Hal's birthday so he returns home (first time for 6 years) to see his friends (40-60 years old). Jill (ex-nun, now single with triplets) hosts a party. Guests argue until the Italian car-racing boyfriend of Tootle (ex cover-girl now environmentalist) turns up and puts on dance music
• King bee - A childless couple adopted a 7 y.o. boy. He'd been trouble ever since his probation period was over - swearing, raping, obsessed with bees, trying to killing himself. When he was put away they moved house, hoping never to see him again. When at 18 he was released and he found them, says the woman was his Queen bee, and dies covered in bees, though he could have saved himself.
• Thawing out - Some old people have gathered for their annual leap into the freezing Hudson. Niana's the youngest by 30 years. Her 23 y.o. boyfriend Marty (his PoV) looks on. Niana's fat mother is among them. Marty's friend Terry tells him that girls end up looking like their mothers. Terry says he's seen Marty's mum heading to Bermuda with a man. Months later the couple holiday in wild Canada. He falls in the freezing water because of a communication problem with the guide. Later he goes with Terry to San Francisco. It's supposed to be a holiday. It ends up being months. He stops writing to Niana. He returns penniless. Niana has moved. He visits her mother. He turns up at the annual event, sees Niana, strips off and jumps in. She'd said it wasn't so bad and she was right.
• The devil and Irv Cherniske - Irv, 40-ish with 2 sons, meets the devil, who offers him a deal. He asks his wife about it. She sneaks off to meet the devil and disappears. Irv goes to meet the devil again. He's killed her. Irv gets rich. He starts donating to a church. 10 years later the Devil meets him and all his investments collapse and his house burns down.
• The miracle at Ballinspittle - While in Ireland, McGahee visits a statue of Mary that Nuala Nolan had once seen move. All the alcohol he's ever drunk appears, then the drugs, then women. He's unconcious for 2 days. Crowds gather. The Pope's on his way. Then McGahee disappears.
• Zapatos - An intellectual nephew of a shoe-shop owner is sent to buy 100s of imported shoes. They're all left ones so he gets them for almost nothing. Meanwhile, at another port, the uncle buys 100s of right ones. He becomes rich enough to become part of the government.
• The ape lady in retirement - Beatrice Umbo, a retired ape expert used to the wild, has trouble adapting to the city. She adopts an ape, Konrad, who'd been taught sign-language. A man offers to fly her over the city. She brings Konrad, who fights with the pilot. They're going to crash. She touches Konrad's hand.
• If the river was whiskey - Tiller is with his bickering parents on a lakeside holiday organised by Tiller's grandfather so his parents could patch things up. His father drinks, his mother nags. She tells her husband to go fishing with Tiller. Tiller takes the boat to a place where he hopes there are pikes. His father hooks a big fish. He wants it to be a pike. But it isn't. He realises his wife's going to leave him and will take Tiller too.

'

Some pieces are like Twilight Zone. The UK's Adam Marek is more SF, but there's an overlap in the earlier stories. China Mieville's short stories sometimes comes to mind too. I like many of the wackier plots, though some endings seem inconsequential. When (as in "If the river was whiskey", for example, or "The overcoat II") the plot's conventional I'm not so impressed. I like much of "All shook up".