Book Review- Flash Fiction Forward

I thoroughly enjoyed reading my book Flash Fiction Forward. It is a collection of eighty very short stories (each about one to two pages in length), edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard. I found the book by asking by my friend, who is an english major at MU, if she had any suggestions for some good short story readings and she gave me this book. The book is quite unique from what I typically read and very different from most short stories. Firstly, they are extremely short, yet, they still manage to convey some sort of meaningful message. Likewise, many of these pieces are successful because they do not require character development or much background information in order to create meaning. In fact, most stories in the book do not establish character names at all; this is incredibly useful in making the meaning more personal to the reader. Using pronouns, the author can easily make the story less specific and increase the likelihood that the story relates with the reader. In addition, many of the stories make profound sociopolitical statements, which add to the quality and importance of the stories. Despite the lack of character development, the stories include a multitude of emotions. These emotions are critical in creating meaning for the reader. Furthermore, it is interesting to read these emotional stories one after another because each emotion is portrayed differently. Moreover, on occasion, the emotion in one story can contrast greatly with the emotion in the following story; this creates an interesting perspective and puts the reader on an “emotional rollercoaster.” For example, in one story, a man commits suicide and in the next story a woman recollects a birthday party as a child and how she received a Barbie doll. One particular story reminded me of the conceptual writing we have been doing in class; the story “Sweet Sixteen” was interesting because an account of a date between a young couple was written all as one sentence. This method was creative by maintaining a flow in the story with the use of punctuation other than periods. Overall, the book was an easy read considering the short length of each story and was a quality read because of the effectiveness of the authors to engage the reader and accurately depict an emotion or message.