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frasersimons's review
5.0
This feels impossible to talk about without spoilers because absolutely everything that interests me pretty much unravels the respective story. You have been warned! This has changed my mind about flash fiction. I have not consumed something that fit the form well previously and was put off of it in other cases—until now.
This collection rightly and smartly begins with The Road to Nowhere, apparently emerging from a confluence of listening to the Talking Heads and Nash’s grey matter. What I love about this, especially as an opening to a collection, is that it signals so many things to the reader.
For one, Nash has an interest in the perception of constructs, interrogating the most mundane object: the road. What actual purpose does it or did it have. What is its importance? But also, many people have the same or similar thoughts when they go hiking, do they not? There is always an offshoot that seems like it goes nowhere productive and yet is so tramped down it’s almost frustrating because what are these people doing? It’s those tourists who go to Banff and pose with bears or cougars in the background. Roads have been around much longer than for the mere conveyance of cars or wagons. They are the detritus of the smart and imbecilic alike, delineating safety from danger and the expectation of reaching a place you presumably know of, as it’s probably a guide posted in some way.
For me, it begged the question: Are we within the expectations a reader would have? Speaking of genre or a theme that might bundle these all together. Or are we off the beaten path here and in for something else?
What follows is something like jazz, I think, so a bit of both.
Yet, there is usually a fluency regarding perception, especially. Aliens, rather than thinking cars are the primary life forms, examine juicy couture. A warlord, crippled with an emotion I don’t even think he’s properly able to understand what’s happening and so regurgitates a war truism while his men do not have the tools to interact with a man not performing his gender in the way he taught them. Ostensible agency embodied in a man who wakes up able to speak in the language of Ur, but no discernible lever in society can be deployed to make any use whatever of such a discovery. It is commodified and co-opted so foolishly it may remove the primary means of agency of everyone everywhere.
Tonally and thematically and subject matter wise, Nash reminds me of Douglas Adams, actually. Though Nash seems less interested in-jokes, when he wishes to be playful or funny, it’s in an erudite way. Other times he pens horror just as well. But Adams doesn’t command as many chewy words from what I recall. Nash knows how to make language work for him economically, but also in telegraphing character, motion, and tone.
“…While his wife’s face alternated between puce rage and puffy cerise when the tears absconded and burnished the skin channels they ploughed.”
Loved this collection and will certainly pick up another Nash book. Immensely enjoyable.
This collection rightly and smartly begins with The Road to Nowhere, apparently emerging from a confluence of listening to the Talking Heads and Nash’s grey matter. What I love about this, especially as an opening to a collection, is that it signals so many things to the reader.
For one, Nash has an interest in the perception of constructs, interrogating the most mundane object: the road. What actual purpose does it or did it have. What is its importance? But also, many people have the same or similar thoughts when they go hiking, do they not? There is always an offshoot that seems like it goes nowhere productive and yet is so tramped down it’s almost frustrating because what are these people doing? It’s those tourists who go to Banff and pose with bears or cougars in the background. Roads have been around much longer than for the mere conveyance of cars or wagons. They are the detritus of the smart and imbecilic alike, delineating safety from danger and the expectation of reaching a place you presumably know of, as it’s probably a guide posted in some way.
For me, it begged the question: Are we within the expectations a reader would have? Speaking of genre or a theme that might bundle these all together. Or are we off the beaten path here and in for something else?
What follows is something like jazz, I think, so a bit of both.
Yet, there is usually a fluency regarding perception, especially. Aliens, rather than thinking cars are the primary life forms, examine juicy couture. A warlord, crippled with an emotion I don’t even think he’s properly able to understand what’s happening and so regurgitates a war truism while his men do not have the tools to interact with a man not performing his gender in the way he taught them. Ostensible agency embodied in a man who wakes up able to speak in the language of Ur, but no discernible lever in society can be deployed to make any use whatever of such a discovery. It is commodified and co-opted so foolishly it may remove the primary means of agency of everyone everywhere.
Tonally and thematically and subject matter wise, Nash reminds me of Douglas Adams, actually. Though Nash seems less interested in-jokes, when he wishes to be playful or funny, it’s in an erudite way. Other times he pens horror just as well. But Adams doesn’t command as many chewy words from what I recall. Nash knows how to make language work for him economically, but also in telegraphing character, motion, and tone.
“…While his wife’s face alternated between puce rage and puffy cerise when the tears absconded and burnished the skin channels they ploughed.”
Loved this collection and will certainly pick up another Nash book. Immensely enjoyable.
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