This week on Carriage Return, Literati celebrates short fiction! Here are a few recent short story favorites.
Atti reviews The Man Who Shot Out My Eye is Dead by Chanelle Benz:
“A veritable smorgasbord of styling and voice, Benz’s storylines tug at the mind long after each has been put aside. A thread of violence binds them together, but the reactions on the cusp of violence hold them apart. From gritty western, to Victorian Society, to ‘found footage,’ Benz proves she has the skill set for literary fiction, and succeeds.”
Mairead blurbs Always Happy Hour by Mary Miller:
“In these wry, compulsively readable stories, Mary Miller delicately unwraps the dumb love mechanisms of the human heart. This book is about mistakes, the ones we make and the ones we think we should be making, the ones we regret and the ones we don’t. Miller’s deft prose is staggered with insights so bracing and real they’ll stop you in your tracks.”
Sam loves The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff:
The final narrator in Rebecca Schiff’s The Bed Moved claims to ‘only know about parent death and sluttiness.’ Yes, these stories (23 in just 139 pages!) cover plenty of death and sex, but Schiff’s women know about far more. Whether they’re obsessing over cancer blogs or visiting nude hot springs with their broke pot-dealer boyfriends, her characters wind up confronting the awkwardness of adolescence, the limits of empathy, the heartbreak of wanting too much or wanting too little. Lest this sound super heavy, please know that Schiff, nearly line by line, manages to be screamingly, jaw-droppingly, enviously HILARIOUS, a dream blend of Lorrie Moore and Amy Hempel that I’ll be gratefully reading for years to come.
