"The proverb zoo" by Armel Dagorn (The dreadful press, 2018)

Stories from Necessary Fiction, The Stinging Fly, The Lonely Crowd, Unthology, etc. "the proverb zoo", "all those lost Edens" and "out-of-town Harry" are excellent stories, and the others don't lack variety.

• a slow, unstoppable devouring of everything - Hans distracted himself from his boring job first by doing painting-by-numbers then painting. When his boss wants to told to him he thinks it's because he daydreams about art, but actually his boss does painting-by-numbers too, and wants tips. He wants to transition to free-hand painting but his wife doesn't understand him.
• a day in the life of Flaquito - The PoV is of a Marxist dog who's lost his favourite toy. No.
• return to Aragon - When the narrator was 11 and her brother 15 they went on a family holiday to Spain. It was their final holiday before the divorce. The father eventually moved to Spain. Now she's 31 and visiting him. She realises that his directions take her to a house where she recalls seeing a pretty woman 20 years earlier
• two new happy endings and an old one - Antoine, 10, finds an unexploded bomb made years before in Detroit. It goes off in the back of the bomb disposal van. The soldier gets early retirement and the boy has a story to tell. They're both happy. it's about a page long.
• out-of-town Harry - Harry tunes the vocal cords of brain-dead people so that with the help of technology they can still speak. He recognises his customer. They were close friends decades before. Harry helped him arrange his house for an avant-garde musical performance. Harry slept once with his wife and made her pregnant. He meets the widow and is unvited to a meal to get to know his son. My favourite story so far. Typo on p.33 - "jokeswhen".
• the last minutes of BA flight 465 - 2 pages. An explanation of how a series of unfortunate events caused a plane to crash. Not interesting enough.
• life here's no different - 3 men and 2 women are shipwrecked on an island. The first-person male protagonist waits hoping that the women will get fed up with the hunky hunter and the sensitive poet. Adrian Mole meets Lord of the Flies.
• a repeat offence of meekness - 3 pages. Dan, accused by his partner Gillian of being a pushover, says to their religious landlord that he's religious. The landlord begins giving them bible literature. Gillian tells Dan to correct the misunderstanding. When she's out and Dan hears a knock at the door on Ash Wednesday he draws a cross using ash on his forehead before opening the door. It's not the landlord, it's Gillian.
• the proverb zoo - The narrator, Aidan, and his mother are on the mother's boyfriend's boat which capsizes in collision with a whale. They're saved by fishermen who "boathooked us by the jackets like funfair plastic ducks". Then we learn that Aidan was 2 when his father died. He didn't like his mother's boyfriends and sooner or later tried to get rid of them. His mother tried to distract him with hobbies and projects. He'd got excited about photographing scenes that could be captioned by a proverb involving animals. Photographing "A whale of a time" things go wrong. My favourite story by far.
• breaking restraints - Shy Rachael's scarf blows away. It covers scars made while flying kits (as in "The Kite Runner"). A man catches it and returns it, not minding the scars at all.
• the brotherhood of Wednesday afternoons - Little more than a page. Children are left in IKEA all Wednesday afternoons when there's no school. Eventually they drop their own kids there.
• Nora and Anthony - Underpaid Nora, part of a theatre group, discovers Anthony living in an unused theatre box. They blackmail the boss so that she gets her rightful wages.
• all those lost Edens - the first-person narrator is navigator on a 4-day ride (in South America?)with young Ruiz and Orozco (drunk bully). Orozco explains how as a minor field doctor years before he'd saved the president-to-be's life by sawing his leg off. He'd buried it, but now the president wanted it recovered. They pass through lands where the narrator had dreamed of living a simple married life. He's gifted at map-making. Orozco plans to cut off Ruiz's leg. The narrator kills Orozco in the night and uses his leg. The crime sets him up for life. He makes a map. I like the voice, the detail and the plot!
• tiny miracles - A 2 inch high madonna in a Lourdes gift shop comes to life, following a little girl who wants her - whose belief had brought her to life? But she doesn't get there in time. 2 pages
• the idiot of Kildare Village - Parents' then villagers' preceptions of Aidan, a jobless 27 year old with a PhD in astrophysics. He applies for a job in a village shop. At the end of the day he sits on a bench - "he can't take the 1:1 scale model town square seriously. He sees the square come to life, is reclaimed from commercialism - a barbeque, old hippies, a girl.

Other reviews

• Jack Sheehan (The stories vary substantially in length; the shortest are barely more than snapshots or intellectual exercises a few pages long. These have varying degrees of success ... There is also an obvious influence from George Saunders on several stories)