The writing reflects the characters. Most of them are common, everyday people who are not writers, and it shows in the prose. But this doesn’t mean there’s not beautiful paragraph here and there that is astounding. No, the prose never gives way to being writerly. It is mostly written in the character’s voices and at their skill level, yet the beauty comes purely from people experiencing their lives and describing it honestly and truthfully. It made me reflect on how perhaps people who are not trained as writers (and I’m talking about the first person narrators here, not the author themself) can show more honesty without being restrained by writing conventions. Sometimes it makes for something interesting, and these pieces made me reflect on the fact that the act of writing unto itself is a near magical and ancient medium of communication, restrained not by technology but by mere language and the skill of the writer. The language of this piece is unadorned but not simple. It says everything it needs to say in all the words it needs to say it.
I read the 9/11 story, and it is one of the few pieces of this kind that truly reflected the hurt and anguish of the tragedy without resorting to melodrama. There is honesty and truth, and because of that the piece works and is beautiful. There are no false machinations of the writer forcing the event into pretty words. It’s simply a character living her experience, and the reader experiencing it with her. There are many excerpts I could pull out to prove my point, but I don’t want to spoil it. The best part of these shorts is finding the beauty in what seems to be average experiences.
Overall: I liked it, and I think other people will like it. It made me feel and experience moments in the characters’ lives with concise prose.
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I appreciate short stories and flash fiction. Because of their length it’s necessary that every phrase be succinct and tell the story in as few words as possible. Perfection is required, whereas in longer fiction people will overlook rough spots in favor of other elements.
Prose is even more important in this sort of fiction because there is so little content for the writer to utilize. Often it’s in the telling. So how is the prose? The author uses short, choppy sentences in combination with longer ones for description. The mix of the long and short actually works, and they’re effective in conveying what he wants. I think I actually appreciate that the author is able to set a tone just with sentence length: longer sentences describe the scene and situation while shorter sentences are often digging into a character’s head, creating a tense situation or for action. There’s variety, and it’s interesting to read. Many authors could take notes on how to spruce up their prose.
I’ll use an example: the short story "The Gun" begins with short, choppy sentences that gradually become longer until there’s a sentence-long paragraph to reflect the unraveling situation of the story. It works, and this is a skilled author who knows how to use punctuation properly so they can write sentences like that. Sentences can be any length, and even be readable, so long as very long ones are used sparingly so as to not tire the reader and punctuation is absolutely perfect.
What I sense is so unique about the way this story is told is that the prose reflects the content of the stories and the events that they describe.
The prose is not perfect, however. At some points I felt like the sentences were too breezy. There weren’t enough pauses, and so it sometimes reads strangely. Hopefully the author will refine their style.
Why am I remarking so much on the prose? Because I think this prose is rather remarkable and unique, even if I have small nitpicks against it.
The stories themselves are interesting and the dialogue is well-drawn.
Overall: Unique and remarkable. Read it for nothing else but the prose, although all the elements from characters to dialogue work pretty well.
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