"Flash fiction festival six" (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023)

An anthology of Flash mostly by Flash Festival Bristol 2023 attendees. Of the 80 pieces (many inspired by the workshops), about 18 are by men. Authors include some well known Flash/small-press names - Carrie Etter, Diane Simmons, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Jude Higgins, K M Elkes, Meg Pokrass, Michael Loveday, Nancy Stohlman, Vanessa Gebbie, etc.

The pieces (max 300 words) are mostly Flash Fiction, though there's the odd prose poem and CNF piece ("Becoming Marie"). Some pieces look suspiciously innocuous, as if I've missed the point. A few are commented on by judges, which I found useful.

I can only read a few pieces at a time. I'm still learning how to like some styles of Flash. I think that I have the most trouble with quirky (Pokrassian?) pieces which have a surprise each sentence. I've a bias towards formalist pieces and pieces that have an essay tone.

Phil Hudson's story fooled me, though maybe it should have a different title. My favourites included "A Foreign Place" and "Barbie Arm", reprints by experts Kathy Fish and Nancy Stohlman.

"Charity Shop Sue's Tools for Management and Success" by Charity Shop Sue

An audio book (more a monologue with sound effects and the occasional extra voice) by a Nottingham shop manager who doesn't believe that the customer's always right, and keeps trying to be superior to her staff (who think that during her reign the shop has become less popular, but they're scared to say so). To Sue, staff rotas are like Suduko. We get exercises and the inside story on Refunds, Staff toilets, Hard Sell, and how [not] to donate. Cosily comic until the final half-hour, which wasn't so interesting.

"The dark circle" by Linda Grant

An audio book. Flexible PoV.

In 1949 Lenny fails his medical examination for National Service. He and his twin sister, Miriam, have TB. They live in London, Jews, looked after by her East End uncle. They're taken to a distant sanitorium, nicknamed the Gwendo. They're one of the early patients funded by the NHS. He doesn't know that he's left an Italian girl pregnant.

Miriam shares a room with Valerie, who has an Oxford degree. She thinks of TB as working class and also as the illness Keats had. The place is still rather upper class. When young American Arthur Persky arrives, order is disrupted. We learn that years later, Lenny would tell his business associates that he learnt a lot for Persky. He has sex with a popular nurse at the first attempt, giving her, her first orgasm though she'd had many lovers before. He organises a little party for the children (whose presence hadn't been mentioned before), and introduces rock and roll.

We learn of the various treatments - isolation, a pint of Guinness a day, collapsing a lung - and of a promising new treatment. Doctors emphasise submission to regimes.

Hannah is a quiet German patient - a lesbian. Her lover Sarah who works for the BBC befriends Peter, a closet MP in his late twenties, and gets him to send a new drug to Gwendo, telling the boss to give one of the 6 doses to Hannah. The boss agonises over who to give the other doses to - himself? mothers? the worst cases? officers? agitators? When news gets out there are more protests. People no longer work through committees.

The uncle of Lenny and Miriam illegally gets the drug for Miriam. Arthur injects her but she ab-reacts and goes blind. Valery has an operation to remove several ribs.

In 1953 Hannah and Sarah are in an artists colony in Italy. Lenny and Valery are there too, with Miriam. Arthur, still feeling guilty, tries to visit but gets caught with a stolen dress.

Lenny and Valery work for the ITV, then try LA for a few years. They have kids. Mariam's not totally deaf. She marries, becomes a widow, moves to the coast.

In his mid-60s Lenny revisits the sanitorium. It had become a hotel, then closed. The locals are used to ex-patients revisiting. Independently, Mariam visits. She breaks into the abandoned building, wanders from room to room. She's always missed Arthur. Many people don't know what TB is any more.

When Valery dies, Mariam, 81, lives with rich Lenny.

Other reviews

• Christobel Kent (exhilaratingly good)
• Hannah Beckerman (Occasionally, the novel wears its social history too conspicuously on its sleeve: references to the early years of TV, issues with the middle classes, housing developments and debates about the NHS can at times feel pointed and do not fit entirely seamlessly with the narrative.)
• savidgereads (the more I read on the more bittersweet the humour becomes, after all the power with dark comedy is that it verges so close to the edge of tragedy the two can become entwined and the effect of that can be incredibly emotionally potent)
• goodreads

"The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan (Corsair, 2022).

One chapter (story?) was in The New Yorker.

Build

• The affinity charm - Rich, famous black Bix Bouton (41) is married to Lizzie. They have 4 kids, the last, Gregory (3) is still breastfeeding. He feels empty, lacking ideas. He joins a discussion group under an assumed name, enjoys the banter, finds himself walking through New York at night with pretty Rebecca (c.25). Alone again, he reaches a bridge and recalls how his mates Rob and Drew jumped in, Rob dying. He phones his mother-in-law, asking her what he should do next.
• Case study: No one gets hurt - Even by the age of 9, Alfred Hollander's "intolerance of fakery had jumped the life/art barrier and entered his everyday world". His brothers Ames (who went into Special Ops) and Miles weren't impressed. He's impressed by Jack, a friend of Ames whose mother had died. At 11 Alfred wore a brown bag over his head. In 2009 he made a 3-hour documentary film free of artifice called "The Migratory Patterns of North American Geese". His parents divorce. His mother has an affair with Jack. Rebecca Amari is doing a PhD about authenticity in the digital era. Kirsten and Alfred start going out. He visits his relatives with her, says something provocative, then they leave to track down Jack. He's divorced with kids. He seems happy. Kirsten tells Alfred (who by now is mocking his film) that Jake is inauthentic.
• A journey A stranger comes to town - Miles and Drew's PoVs. Miles (52) has an artist cousin Sasha who stole from the family as a kid, returning things when she married Drew. Sasha's boy Lincoln is "troubled". We learn that Miles, with a wife Trudy, 3 kids and a serious job, took uppers and downers, eventually using a drug dealer Damon. He had an affair with Trudy's friend Janna, who in an accident while he was driving lost a leg. He had a metal plate put on his head. Trudy divorced him. He looked after the kids, helping people with rehab. He buys some of Bix's products including Hey What Ever Happened To?™ which lets you download memories as search terms. He sees Bix's memory of Rob's last night. He had a happy enough upbringing. Sasha didn't. He decides to visit her in the desert. Her recycled art pieces are best seen from the air. He and Drew go on a hot air balloon at dawn. Drew saves him when he tries to jump. He spends 3 weeks in a psych ward and ends up living in the area, finding a law job.
• Rhyme scheme - Lincoln's PoV. He's a metrics expert, a "counter", giving percentage success rates to actions (including the chat-up tactics involved with meeting Madelaine, who he finally marries). Other people are "typicals" or "impressionists". The company he works for has "determined that a new generation of hermit crab programs has been designed specifically to elude our proxy filters" - an inside job. O'Brien, his boss, is sacked.

Break

• The mystery of our mother - Lana and Melora (born mid-70s) are daughters of a twice divorced father with 4 kids already. He leaves when they're young. He's a record producer with a private beach. When they're 16 she does fieldwork in the Amazon for months. They live with their father. His son Rolph kills himself. She publishes "Patterns of Affinity" (a book of algorithms about human behaviour - she "mapped the genome of human inclinations") in 1999. We're told she's Miranda Klein. She becomes famous. In 2025, aged 74, she disappears, replacing herself by a proxy (an AI program). Her daughters don't realise for a while. Melora takes over her father's business after he has 6 strokes.
• What the forest remembers - "I" watched the recreated memories of her father on a trip into woods with banking friends. They stay in an A-frame, smoke grass.
• Bright day - Roxy (child of father's middle marriage - she ODs in 2025 when 57) is in rehab. Chris and Molly (their company is called Modrian) visit to host Dungeons and Dragons, where character details are chosen by dice. She's gifted a Consciousness Cube. She tries to relive a trip with her father to London when she was 17 and appearing on music videos.
• i, the protagonist - Chris works for Sid's "Sweetspot" which algebra-izes stock narratives. Comstock takes him for a ride on his motorbike, collects a woman from the airport, and leaves him with her luggage.

Drop

• The perimeter: after - Molly used to live next to Chris Salazar before her parents divorced.
• Lulu the spy, 2032 - 2-column with 53 numbered sections. How an analytical woman deals with being singled by a male on a Med beach. "The Dissociation Technique is like a parachute - you must pull the cord at the correct time" ... "Return to your body carefully, as if reentering your home after a hurricane". She has an implanted microphone. She's married, 33. She's taken from a party by speedboat with her Designated Mate, who's meeting an important person at a clifftop villa - "If it calms you to imagine your husband tracking your dot of night, then imagine it" ... "An uncomprehending giggle is a beauty's most reliable tool for diffusing conflict". He leaves in a hurry on the boat. She's found by the new host's "alpha beauty". She says she's been dumped. She's taken to the villa. In the night she downloads everything from the host's phone. She's discovered by the woman, who shoots her in the shoulder. She escapes in another speedboat. She dissociates without meaning to, to escape the pain. A helicopter saves her.
• The perimeter: before Hannah recounts living next to the Salazars. The wife's supposed brother Jules moved in then 9 months later the husband moves out. Hannah's mother and Jules don't get on, then she makes up once she learns more about him.
• See below - sections have headings like "Lulu→Ashleigh". Lulu, now 35, wife of Joseph has a child. There's talk of reviving a rock group.

Build

• Eureka gold - through Gregory (Bix's son) we learn of Bix's death and his deathbed uploading. Gregory 'had declined even the ritual "baseline" upload to a Mandala Cube, now customary at age twenty-one as a hedge against brain injuries.' Bix had tried to track down Melanie Klein, then had befriended Chris. In his will he left Mondrian lots of money.
• Middle son (area of detail) - It's 1991. Mother Sue watches middle son Ames play baseball. She's nervous. He flukes a memorable hit. We learn that he goes into Special Ops, becomes a freelance assassin, then in 2023 aged 43 retires and buys the family house, living with his mother by then divorced for 20 years. We're told about other lives he could have had, and some facts from the Collective. "Even so, there are gaps: holes left by eluding separatists bent upon hoarding their memories and keep their secrets. Only Gregory Bouton's machine - this one, fiction - lets us roam with absolute freedom through the human collective." He dies alone in a nursing home, over 90 years old.

I would have had to read it again to connect the pieces. I should have made more notes - it's hard knowing which details/people will matter later. I liked "Lulu the spy, 2032". The first and final sections were satisfying. I struggled with "See below" and several of the other sections didn't deliver much.

Other reviews

• Beejay Silcox (explores the loneliness of hyper-connectivity ... a novel of Easter eggs – of hidden in-joke treats ... What felt playful in Goon Squad now feels a little stale)

"Alone" by Paolo Alberti (ed) (Giraldi Editore, 2019)

18 stories by Paolo Alberti, Gianluca Morozzi, Stefano Mellini, Leonardo Vicari, Piero Mariella

"alone" in Italian means "halo", an apt coincidence, as the back cover notes.

• "Han Solo!" recounts activity in a computer game - Han Solo vs Deus - for 6 pages, then shows us at the end that the 2 players are a boy whose mother discourages computer games, and an illegal immigrant, a 10 y.o. Chinese boy who told the psychologist he wanted to be called Han.
• "All those yesterdays" refers to several songs including Pearl Jam's "Alone".
• In "Sisifo Meccanico" a robot continues visiting his masters' house not realising they're dead. There may be no-one else alive. The robot then dies.
• In "Isolamento Amniotico" a fetus comes to consciousness, wondering if it already knows all it needs to. It's late. The mother doesn't know the baby's gender.
• In "2 Agosto 1980" Marisa (recently divorced, working in an autogrill) feels lonely though she's with a crowd. Paride (recently divorced from Marisa is a bus driver. His bus is divered to help with the Bologna massacre. Their son Tommaso is with his grandmother. She says that when she feels angry she hammers nails into wood. When Paride collects him, he's hammered in as much nails as victims of the massacre.

"The Darkest Evening" by Ann Cleeves

An audio book.

Lorna, who's been ill, has a baby, Thomas, who's about a year old.

It's been snowing. While driving her landrover in Northumberland, Vera, a detective inspector, finds an abandoned car with a baby in it. She takes the baby, leaving a note. The nearest house happens to belong to a rich relative of Vera's. Vera's not seen them for years, not since her father (the black sheep of the family) died. Juliette's holding a little party there. She and actor Mark have been married 3 years, childless. He wants to convert the rundown stately home into a theatre, and it seeking money. Dorothy, with a Cambridge degree and a toddler, is the housekeeper. She went to school with Juliette. Vera finds that the car is owned by 67 year old Constance Brown (ex-teacher). Her neighbour Lorna, a single mother, sometimes borrows her car.

Joe, a family man, is one of the policemen.

A dead body is found outside - Laura's.

They interview Lorna's mother while the father is out. Pretty Lorna had been bullied at school and got anorexia. She spent time in a clinic. She became pregnant. The mother thinks that her husband loved Lorna deeply, but the police wonder about the father (though they don't interview him?). The mother had seen the baby, but the father hadn't. The couple agree to look after the baby.

Holly, part of the police team, thinks through the suspicions that readers might be harbouring - that a woman might have murdered.

Mark has a womanising reputation. Juliette wants a child. Mark jobshares with Sophie. Mark lies to the police about what he did early one day in Newcastle.

Lorna liked painting. One of her several paintings of a cottage was called "The darkest evening". Josh (a friend of Mark) was in her art group. He and Lorna were friends, non-sexual.

Constance suddenly disappears. Lorna's clinic bills were paid by Juliette's father, Crispin. Lorna's mother said that she had a serious affair with Juliette's father, and Lorna could have been his child. But Juliette says that Crispin died before Lorna became pregnant.

On the day of her death, Lorna phoned various helpers saying that she was slipping back - something to do with Thomas's father.

Juliette knows that her mother knows that her father wanted Lorna to be looked after, though it wasn't in the will.

Vera finds that the cottage is in the estate's woods.

Bloodtests showed that Crispin wasn't Lorna's father.

Thomas is taken. Vera finds him in the cottage. A man with a shotgun takes here away - Josh's father. He confesses that he was Thomas's father, and that he'd planned to start a new life with Lorna. But when Lorna became stronger, less vulnerable, she changed her kind and became friends with Josh. Holly saves Vera. Vera later explains the case to Joe, and promises to stay friends with her rich relatives. Vera sees ways to help solve some people's problems that she'd learnt about during the invesigation.

"The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" by Shehan Karunatilaka

An audio book.

It's a whodunnit where the second-person POV murder victim is a ghost who's forgotten the moments before his death. Comedy and Politics are included in the mix.

It’s 1975, Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers are about. When Maali realises he’s dead, in limbo, he thinks "So there is an afterlife". He was a photographer, gay, keen on gambling. He's described as a "dinner party activist". He's proud that he worked for anyone. He doesn’t recall his death. He sees his body in pieces, with other bodies. There’s admin to do within 7 days otherwise he'll never be able to move on to "The Light". They’re short of staff and are seeking volunteers. He learns the rules – about how to travel, etc. He's jumped from place to place (conveniently). He’s told not to visit cemeteries. He follows relatives and police to see what happened to him - thrown off a hotel balcony? He sees other ghosts. He doesn't want to leave until he finds out how he died, and gets the negatives of the photos to the right people. He learns how to whisper to the living, and influence their dreams.

Dr Rani is his guide. He knows her from his previous life - she used some of his photos without permission. Under his bed he has some incriminating photos from the 1983 riots. A Canadian-backed charity would like the photos. He used to live with Jackie – a relationship of convenience. He has a friend whose trait is "weaponising politeness as well as any Englishman"

Suicides and scholars try to convince him about the pros about cons of limbo. One suicider said that reincarnation was cheaper than paying for a sex-change, and that staying in limbo suited him - he'd always been an inbetweener.

When he discovers that Jackie was interrogated, he sells his soul to get her freed.

I think it could be shortened by 20% (the final 30 minutes for example don't feel effective) but it mostly manages to combine its genres successfully.

Other reviews

• Tomiwa Owolade
• Frank Lawton (For worlds like Karunatilaka’s to work, an author must set governing rules, so that the fantastic is not used as an easy trick to just magic away plot problems. Karunatilaka does briefly fall into this trap, with a new rule, discovered two-thirds of the way through and leading to an important plot development a few pages later, feeling overly convenient. But generally, his creation is hard won ... Some critics have seen The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida as a purely dystopian satire. But this misses the hope at the book’s core. For Karunatilaka also satirises those who see the world as a flat, material place without deeper meaning. ... Witty, inventive and moving, Karunatilaka’s prose is gloriously free of cliché, and despite the apparent cynicism of his smart-alec narrator, this is a deeply moral book that eschews the simple moralising of so much contemporary fiction. )