Welcome to the first in my Stories I Met On The Internet series. I have been reading widely online and have found so many terrific pieces of flash fiction, I decided to start a series of regular posts spotlighting three stories that have particularly moved me in any given week or month. You can find the first of my recommendations under the cut. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did. “The Saddest Sailor” by Temim Fruchteris (2018) featured in Issue Five, Fall 2018 of MoonPark Review.
I feel as though I cheated a bit with this one because I discovered it when I was reading an interview in Lambda Literary with the editors of MoonPark, who selected this as an example of the kind of stories the journal publishes. Once I had read it, however, I had to put it high up on my growing list of recommendations because it's so incredibly beautiful. I was left thinking about this story long after I finished reading. The prose is tightly woven and there's a real and simultaneously unreal quality to the narrative, with evocative, rich turns of phrase and a final line that left me breathless. There's also a gorgeous piece of art by Lesley C. Weston that accompanies the story. Really stunning stuff. “Mortality Event” by Hadiyyah Kuma (2019) featured in Issue 65 of SmokeLong Quarterly. I have already returned to this story several times over. The structure is interesting and inventive. The narrative is situated very clearly in a moment in time with pop culture references to bands like K-Pop group BTS, but it also has a distinctly timeless feel to it. This is the human world seen through the eyes of a bird and the ending is incredibly moving. Beautiful and clever. “So Pretty When She Smiled” by Lavanya Vasudevan (2019) featured in Jellyfish Review. I love the way this story explores gender imbalance in a captivating way, without ever becoming didactic or polemical. This story resonated with me so much and the writing is wonderfully immersive as the story unfolds. An extraordinary and poetic take on the struggles women have to be heard.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
September 2020
Categories |