Finished reading: After Realism edited by André Forget 📚

A really fun read of short stories by Canadian authors. Some were experimental, some long, some short, some really out there. It was a fun few days as I worked through them.

My favorites were:

  • Carleigh Baker’s “Baby Boomer”: wow, short and powerful
  • Tom Thor Buchanan’s “Jamaica”: another great story. So many loose threads that didn’t impact the story one iota.
  • Camilla Grudova’s “Madame Flora’s”: wow, weird but interesting
  • Casey Plett’s “Portland, Oregon”: there is no reading joy more perfect that a Casey Plett short story! I love her writing. I knew I’d read this before, it was in her debut collection, A Safe Girl to Love.
  • David Hubert’s “Chemical Valley”: fucking dark. Good writing.
  • Michael Lapointe’s “The Stunt”: powerful and very dark. Sadly true.

I also thought the following were good:

  • Ryan Avanzado’s “Tita Esme’s Room”: pretty good. Probably needed more space at the end to flesh story out. But pretty good.
  • Paola Ferrante’s “Underside of a Wing”: good read, nice running repetition of the word albatross and its meaning to the author)
  • Sofia Mostaghimi’s “Roxane and Julieta”
  • Cason Sharpe’s “California Underwater”: good quick slice of life, nicely written too.

John Elizabeth Stintzi has a piece in here. It wasn’t one of my favorites in this collection, but please check out their novel Vanishing Monuments or their poetry collection, Junebat. Those are heart-shatteringly beautiful.