"Dancing alone and other lessons" by Digby Beaumont (2020)

About 30 Flash pieces from "Monkeybicycle", "Boston Literary Magazine", "The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts", etc. It's in 3 sections - "reaching out", "holding on" and letting go".

The "reaching out" section has lonely people meeting lonely people. Three of the pieces are episodic. The best idea is in "On Finding Your Father Is a Ventriloquist: A Guide" (one of 3 "Guides" in the book) - a widower father visits his son, who tries to make him give up his dummy. "He Drives as If This Were the Start of Something" has a quietly menacing feel. In "I Really Like Your Hair" a person misapplies some guidelines to making friends. It's short and works ok. Several of the other pieces have interesting details but the mood's a bit samey and the endings are inconsequential. "Ring of Fire" goes nowhere despite a promising set-up. "Blue, Red, Black" ends flatly. I presume the idea of "Rescue" is that by saving Sid, the narrator saves herself. But that's not enough for me.

In the "holding on" section I like "Home Improvements", "Bird Table", "Excuses" and "Thermalling". Not "Last Shot" or "Room and Board". "Searching for Venus" is ok too, though I've seen the idea of looking back at one's own house from a garden telescope twice before.

In "letting go" (my favourite section) I liked "Who Knew More Than Karen Carpenter About a Broken Heart?" (in the sentence "Karen sings about a kiss for luck and being on our way in that happy-sad way of hers and I wonder if she visits others in this way, too" "way" is used 3 times. Deliberate?). "Clawing at Hope" is ok too, as is "The Naming of Fruit". "Cut Loose" is perhaps my favourite story in the book. It starts with "It’s impossible for my dad to move". Given the body count so far in the book I expected a death-bed scene, but the continuation is "overnight he’s turned into a kite". The twists continue. The narrator says “First Mum, now this” making us aware of the context. The father later says “I’m counting on you” which adds suspense. The father wants the son to launch him. He succeeds. At the end of the story, "another kite appears. Then another. ... I wave back before letting go, and the sun hurts my eyes as he continues his ascent" - lyricism prepared for by the earlier details of the kite and the beach.

In general, starts are much better than endings. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Flash collections are a relatively new (or at least recently revived) idea, and I'm still inexperienced about reading them. How much variety should one expect? Is thematic coherence an asset or are there too many passively lonely men in this collection?

Theme	Freq
Man's dead neighbour/friend/brother	3
Man deserted by wife	7
Lonely widower/divorcé	5
Dead parent	3

Where should the quality line be drawn? Should each collection have at least one competition winner? The short story and poetry collections I like tend to have at least a Bridport short-listed piece or equivalent. Most if not all these pieces have been previously published, but I don't feel that the best are strong enough to carry the weaker pieces.