All Things Pankish

Fractured West #2: A Review by Tania Hershman

It took me far longer to read this magazine of flash fiction than it usually does to read most novels, and that is testament to the power and intensity of an excellent piece of flash fiction. I carried it around with me for several weeks, reading a story here and there, on the bus, waiting for a meeting. And I found I could almost never read more than one, because they are just so incredibly good that all the physical sensations that accompany a great short short story – that punched-in-the-gutness, that sharp intake of breath – caused me to close the book and let the flash sink into and through me. What greater pleasure is there?

The first story, ‘When We Lived Inside the Alligator’ by Robert Kloss, sets the tone for the “teething beasts” theme, a stunning tiny masterpiece which begins:

Then I, without regard for the teeth and humidity, the mist and the blood, the birds clawing and staring and screaming, moved my family into the alligator.

It is all there, from that beautiful opening “Then”, which catapults you straight into the heart, to the phrases “my family” coupled with “the alligator”, the foreshadowing of violence and tragedy with “screaming”. This is utterly original and surreal and yet deeply poignant and somehow familiar, about mistakes made, the troubles of wives, children and mothers-in-law. And the most devastating ending.

‘Shaky Hands & All’ by Ryan Ridge lightens the tone, a surface of humour and a structure of numbered sections, and yet too this has such depth and a last line writers could die for. ‘Star Children’ by Ashley Farmer in just one paragraph is both poetic and worlds-encompassing. A study in the use of just the right individual word such as “sober” that conveys everything.

‘Contact’ by Angela Readman is another study of how the last line of a flash story – which you see out of the corner of your eye as you are reading, since it is on the small page facing you – just slaughters you. This story made me aware of the particular way of reading such a short piece: as perhaps in the writing of it, you see the end hinting to you as you begin and that is part of the beauty of flash.

‘Role Playing’ by Hannah Pass is one of those Hemingwayesque stories where almost everything is between the lines:

Yesterday I looked over my shoulder and found nothing except confused squirrels.

Mark Terrill’s ‘The Purview’, a story told in a single long sentence, strikes you immediately before even reading, the profusion of “&”s jumps from the page and is an integral part of the reading experience, as in a poem.

‘Wilson Point’ by Stephen Kempster Whelpdale Thomas is another favourite, with the lulling rhythm of sentences beginning with “Listen” that is a miniature portrait of life in its entirety.

‘Real Fake’ by Sara Crowley also covers a whole life in its small frame, and that last line, as I read it again, caused my insides to twist in the most wonderfully distressing way.

I won’t mention every single story here – although I could easily write an essay on each one – but to say that they have been so well chosen and form a most satisfactory whole, each one read then lingers in the mind as, perhaps days later, I settled to enjoy another. This magazine is a treasure trove, one which relies not on bulk to paint pictures of the angles and curves of our lives but on perfectly-selected words, strung together with the utmost care. Space constraints are no limitation here but perhaps instead liberation from the extraneous, the padded. Here is the essence. It is intense; sip it slowly.

Fractured West #2 is available here.

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