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pearloz's review
I'm already skeptical of micro-fiction when the stories are cohesive and 'complete', but when they come across as scattered, improv-like nonsense, I'm fully against it. I, in fact, enjoyed some of these entries--the best of them felt like anecdotes/myths from the same small town (for some reason they felt like they were all set at night), but my least favorite of them were word salad, prose-poems:
"I learned to sister. We played water tower. I took the light, it stayed, the mystery, the light letters from Edison with my name on them. We chased a river, we played blue pills, we seemed to flicker the truth, we fused back water. The town got red letters. The light stayed on."
What? I like my fiction mysterious and strange and obscure as much as anything, but some of these vignettes went beyond obfuscation, they were hostile to understanding, and I couldn't connect. Micro-fiction suffers in my retention already because of the sheer number of stories crammed into a book and because their effect is so short term, that by the end of a collection, I have no idea what I've read. This is worsened when I don't like them.
"I learned to sister. We played water tower. I took the light, it stayed, the mystery, the light letters from Edison with my name on them. We chased a river, we played blue pills, we seemed to flicker the truth, we fused back water. The town got red letters. The light stayed on."
What? I like my fiction mysterious and strange and obscure as much as anything, but some of these vignettes went beyond obfuscation, they were hostile to understanding, and I couldn't connect. Micro-fiction suffers in my retention already because of the sheer number of stories crammed into a book and because their effect is so short term, that by the end of a collection, I have no idea what I've read. This is worsened when I don't like them.
kiramke's review against another edition
A lot of imagery and wordplay that I just didn't get; rather than stories these seemed prose poems. And that's fine, this happens in poetry sometimes; there's a symbolism that doesn't translate into my view.
To be fair, I spent this week reading the book furiously for 3 minutes in effort to relax, dropping it, and repeating that process an hour later.
To be fair, I spent this week reading the book furiously for 3 minutes in effort to relax, dropping it, and repeating that process an hour later.
tiredandspice's review against another edition
4.0
Even the segments that didn't do much for me were beautifully written
"The more permanent I become, the less sleep I get"
"The more permanent I become, the less sleep I get"
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