A review by cupofbooksreviews
The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg and Other Stories by Oliver Franks

4.0

I have received The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg: And Other Short Stories by Oliver Franks in exchange for an honest review. I have given this collection of short stories four out of five stars overall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As this is a collection of four short stories, I'm going to break them off into four sections and review them individually via headers. So, let's get started:
The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg
This first story as you can tell by the title is about the death of an old man called Joseph Goldberg. As per the book description above, he transforms into a flock of starlings when he dies. I really liked the author's writing and thought it was a very clever. From what I understand from the descriptions, by Joseph being a flock of starlings he was reliving his war days of flying and bombing. His thoughts that pop up in italics in the short story such as "Come on you little bastards, I've got you!" lead me to believe this was about his past life.
The Chair
The second short story, The Chair, is about a military experiment used on a man called Gerard who is a patient in a psychiatric facility miles and miles away from the military base. I thought this short story was very clever as well and I loved Franks' use of words in this short story. Very well descriptive and I loved how the author really made me think about this story afterwards and would have loved to have read on to read more about this chair and Dr Lucy O'Connor.
The Dark Matter of Dreams
Just as the title say of this short story, it is about a man's dream of dark matter. I felt quite confused reading this one as it's very trippy and unique, however I could imagine in my mind how the scenes would look and how they transform into one another, because once again Franks' descriptive writing is on point!
Without the Simple Science
This short story is about a group of friends saying goodbye to one another in a dystopian world. This very very short story packs a punch of information which really helps to set the scene and what has happened in their world. This story left me feeling sad and wanting to know what happens during/after the storm surge.
I really enjoyed reading over the collection of short stories by Oliver Franks and would definitely recommend them to everyone. I look forward to reading more from this author in the near future.