Short Stories Book Reviews

Review: Suicide Lettres by Jack O’Riley

suicide lettresSuicide Lettres, a book of twenty short stories is the brilliant and dark debut by Fargo-based writer Jack O’Riley. Starting with an unbelievably imaginative and original tale, this is the showcase of a talented writer.

These stories are so unusual that they take the reader into a world of lives twisted and broken by their own doing, spirals that fall out of control with unfolding events.

The opener is stunning and abstract, with a freshly-skinned animal pelt doing the talking; the following tales don’t get easier, but it is this grand uneasiness that takes the reader back to a […]

2014-11-26T13:04:02+02:00November 26th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: The Bird Room by Chad Hofmann

The Bird Room by Chad Hofmann“It’s too late for him too, said the man in a high-pitched voice, drooling in anticipation, like a dog with a bone. Eli stood frozen, his brain issued a hundred different commands that his body would not obey. The man let out bone chilling cackle and, with lightning quickness, sunk the blade of the scalpel into Eli’s left thigh. The pain hit Eli like a train and he was instantly brought back to reality. He looked over at the parrot, who was now calm and quiet. Its mysterious gray eyes connected with Eli’s, and he felt as if […]

2014-08-04T09:25:51+02:00August 4th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |

Review: Searching For Paradise by Gerard Marconi

searching for paradise Cate Baum, editor of SPR reviews SPR Awards Shorts winner Searching For Paradise by Gerard Marconi.

It is rare that a male American writer writes about his feelings and experiences in relation to others, especially women. Offerings over the years have been rather narcissistic perspectives in the form of Kerouac, Thompson and Bukowski, with females no better off than a hatstand. We never really learn how the male protagonist feels about the women in their stories, past the sexual attractiveness or hysteria of each one, and god forbid we learn his weaknesses.

Enter Gerard Marconi, author of Searching For Paradise […]

2014-05-21T16:35:14+02:00April 18th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: Bookends: Stories Of Love, Loss, And Renewal by Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold

bookendsThis slim volume of short stories works as something of a fugue on grief and loss, featuring fragile women at both ends of their adult lives. Strangely, the two stages are not that different, at least not for these women, and that is perhaps the saddest thing in these rather sad stories.

The characters in these stories are, for the most part, weak, wispy women—widows adrift, and vaporous young women with overbearing mothers (more than once called dragons)—who seem not so much unable to cope as unable to navigate when the men in their lives abandon them or, more often, […]

2014-05-11T22:52:26+02:00March 31st, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: Epic Sloth – Tales of the Long Crawl by Philip Gaber

Epic SlothPhilip Gaber’s new anthology “Epic Sloth – Tales of The Long Crawl”  yet again hits the mark with post-Postmodern American writing. There isn’t much of this sort of literature around any more and this stuff needs to exist. From Kerouac to Selby to Yates to Palahniuk, Gaber pulls together the sum of these writers to pour out anew what it means to be a young disillusioned man in today’s America.

There is a sure East Coast,  self-effacing vibe to this writing, but there are tales set all over the US with all kinds of people involved. Young Americans seem to […]

2014-05-05T21:07:07+02:00January 15th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: My Friend, Freedom By Peter Eliot

My Friend, Freedom is a short story by emerging author Peter Eliot, set in futuristic, Dystopian London, following the life of Yakimoto, a Japanese immigrant, whose life is left in ruin after a failed attempt at blackmail with a shady corporation. In a time where money is everything, challenging such a huge power is certain suicide, but Yakimoto has had unusual dreams; telling dreams…

The grim sci-fi/cyberpunk setting is reminiscent of something between now and the setting of Blade Runner, with a feel of Noir without an observant detective but rather an aging, drug-addicted businessman stuck on the streets of […]

2014-05-05T21:19:15+02:00December 11th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Review: Between Eden And The Open Road By Philip Gaber

An unusual train of poetry and prose, this stimulating and raw work from Philip Gaber is compelling and almost dangerous to read – dangerous because it touches so many nerves in the reader that it becomes both painful and addictive to carry on.

This is not quite a collection of shorts and not quite a poetry book – more a slice of modern psychology into the lonely hearts of those around us. Set on subways, in homeless shelters, whorehouses, streets, the cloying sense of being alive and flailing in doing so is steeped in these words throughout as we travel […]

2014-05-05T21:42:53+02:00September 10th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , , |

Review: One Short Year by Diane Dunning

In an oft riffed on passage, Blaise Pascal—probably himself riffing on Pliny the Younger— wrote, “I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.” Diane Dunning, the author of the novella The River Secrets, took the time to write a small collection of very short fiction (the selection “The Sun Always Wins” is only 128 words). This is much harder than it looks, and Dunning has pulled it off with style. In the introduction she explains that these stories are popular posts from her blog, selections she describes as “entertaining reading for […]

2014-05-05T21:45:35+02:00August 8th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |
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