Though this work isn’t my cup of tea, it’s still getting four stars from me—for reasons I’ll detail in a moment. First, the basics:

253 is more of a listing than a story, providing very brief snapshots of the 252 passengers of the Bakerloo Line train—plus one driver. The author grants us a bird’s eye view of each character, succinctly describing their appearance, followed by their inner lives, followed by what they are currently doing or thinking. Sometimes, on their own, these blurbs are boring; other times, they are infinitely fascinating. All are made /much/ more fascinating by the knowledge that, in a few more seconds, a number of these characters are going to arrive at a violent and bloody end.

You have the option of reading the story forward, backward, sideways, or inside out—I understand that most stories can be read anyway you want, but this is one of the few stories which /work/ when read any which way. Start at the smoke-choked metal-crumpled end and work your way back, reading biographies as if they were engravings on tombstones; start somewhere before and weave your way through the interrelationships of the characters until the thread leads you to the inevitable conclusions—or just drive on through, reading each passenger’s biography in a straight line to the end.

As I mentioned, this isn’t my cup of tea—I prefer a cohesive, singular narrative. But it still gets four stars, because, first off, it’s interesting—a quality which always merits at least three stars from me—and the limitation the author creates (253 words per entry) creates a sense of brevity that avoids pretension and has enough structure to turn each entry into lego blocks with which you can construct your own narrative. It’s well written, well executed, and—again—interesting. Recommended for anyone who wants a break from stories about teenagers struggling to save the world from a metaphor for growing up while dealing with their own awkward sexuality.

One other aside—don’t miss out on the ‘other announcement’ section of the webpage—there’s a bit of cleverness going on there.

PS: I haven’t read all 253 entries yet, and I don’t imagine I will—something to keep in mind for the purposes of this review.

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