Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Sunday, 9 May 2010

"Iota Fiction 1" by Jane Weir (ed) (2009)

2 factual pieces (one set in Italy, one about someone moving away to an empty house), and stories set in Paris, Malta, London (with many Russians), Arkansis, a foreign city, Florence, somewhere in the UK, Madrid and the US. Many of the narrators are long-term tourists, well-spoken without being pretentious or literary. Simon East's otherwise plain story used non-standard spelling - partly phonetic (liddle instead of "little"), partly poor spelling I suppose (emoshun, feechers). Latin flower names are correctly spelt (fair enough - the main character's a gardener) but so is "successful", "acquaintanced", and "encourage", so I don't really know what's going on. I used to be more impressed by metaleptic stories than I am now, but I still like Pat Winslow's piece. Stuart Henson's story reminded me a little of David Mitchell's work. I would have welcomed fewer displaced persons but all the stories were well written (Hindle's seemed inconsequential though).

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