Review of “Woman from Khao Lak” by Randy F. Nelson, published in One Story

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Most of the stories I write about here are accessible online, for no cost. There are exceptions, of course, and this is one of those instances. I have a subscription to One Story, a publication that I’ve subscribed to off-and-on over the years. It’s an excellent literary organization that consistently publishes knockout stories. The latest “Woman from Khao Lak” by Randy F. Nelson is no exception.

The day I received the story in the mail, I read the first page after dinner, but put it down because I wanted to read it in the morning with fresh eyes. I knew after the first paragraph that I was going to love this one: “From a distance we sounded like one of those outdoor birthday parties where the kids have been running wild since noon.” And later, “…if you layered in the screams, the cannonballing, the splashing, the whistles of the lifeguards, and that low sizzle of bodies roasting in the sun, I’d say it was more like a carnival or a county fair…”

And there it is, that often elusive, and oh-so-coveted voice that we short story writers, writers in general, hope to capture in our own prose. That propulsion and artistry of language. Some combination of words whose musicality lulls our imaginations out of the basket, like a snake charmer playing its pungi.

The story takes place at a pool. Water, it turns out, is an essential element. Following the classic storyline “a stranger comes to town,” Nelson, in the next section introduces us to the charismatically mysterious and tragic Mrs. Diana Byrnes. I won’t mention any more about her other than she’s a swimmer and is much older than the lifeguards and staff members at the pool.

The following section—perhaps my favorite—the protagonist sort of breaks the fourth wall by announcing to us that he was eighteen-years-old when the events of the story occurred, but he’s “considerably older now.” A couple sentences later: “I’m saying this in order to let you know that, even though something very sad will occur, you’re not dependent upon a teenager to get you through the whole story.” Here now is an author, Nelson, exploring the full use of POV—that we are now looking upon events that happened a long time ago, but narrated to us from someone for whom these events have taken a different shape and meaning, like sea glass smoothing out over years of rough and tumble.

Simply put, this is a damn good story. Nelson, like all great writers, makes it look easy, effortless. His prose is fresh and confident, breezing along the page like a motorboat on smooth water. Each of the 12 sections of the story — to switch metaphors — is both foundational and adorned with Nelson’s decorative flair, and you can read this story for a mere $2.50. Maybe worth it to pay a few bucks more for a full year subscription. You’ll be swimming in great stories.

More info, including an interview with Nelson, here.

Randy F. Nelson is a multiple-award-winning writer and teacher whose stories have appeared in many national and international publications. He’s the Virginia Lasater Irvin Professor Emeritus of English at Davidson College, where he offered courses in creative writing and nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction. His first collection, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men, won the Flannery O’Connor Award. Individual stories of his have also been recognized in The Pushcart Prize anthology and The Best American Short Stories.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Musuem and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. More info at keithlesmeister.com.

Review of “Illinois” by Desmond Everest Fuller, published in Nashville Review

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I suppose I’m a sucker for any story that features a Midwestern state, so the title alone caught my eye. As did: train tracks, newly minted adults, Slipknot T-shirts, spin-the-bottle, Sarah McLachlan, stocking shelves at a Thriftway, Lyle Lovett, and snorting random crushed pills off a Ouija Board. In other words, I was hooked from the start, and the story earned my attention the entire way through. It turns out the title is only slightly misleading after we learn what’s behind Martha’s ear. I can’t give it away. That would ruin the story.

I do a good deal of reading of short stories published online. My process is pretty simple: I typically read the first paragraph to decide whether or not to keep reading. In this case, I was captured by the setting (the train tracks), the oddness of the characters pitching eyeballs onto the track (you’ll see what I’m talking about in the first paragraph), and the situation itself: Bobby and Heather are engaged to be married, and Bobby has asked the narrator to be his best man. Bobby wants to marry Heather because “Apparently, Heather’s ex, Reynolds, still [sends] her wild horny messages.” Let’s hope Reynolds doesn’t look anything like the Marvel heartthrob Ryan Reynolds, or else Bobby might be shit-out-of-luck.

The story progresses, and we meet the group of friends: the narrator, Bobby, Heather, and the twins, Marla and Brenda. The narrator’s part in all this is how he fits in with this group, navigating personal spaces, work spaces, intimate spaces. There’s a youthful charge to the story that propels it forward, a kind of unpredictable swagger. One afternoon, for example, working at the Thriftway, Brenda hands the narrator a “warm linty pill.” The two wash them down with “…bright green Jones Soda. Pretty soon it was “…getting harder to feel [his] hands,” as he dropped “canned vegetables” in the aisle.

While the pace of the story feels frenetic at times, there are parts, too, that slow down to focus on exquisitely rendered details. One night, on dusted gravel roads, in Bobby’s Corolla, the narrator observes, “Pines saw-toothed in the moonlight.” Or “Heather’s phone kept chirping in her coat pocket like an orphaned baby bird.” Soon, Marla tells the narrator she loves him and they press their foreheads together, and her breath smells “hot and apple.” Details unique enough to draw attention to themselves, while also clear enough for us to see and understand what’s happening.

A compulsively readable story with hints of Jodi Angel and Ann Cummins. Read the story here.

Desmond Everest Fuller grew up in rural Washington. He earned an MFA in fiction at Boise State University and served as associate editor of The Idaho Review. He was a 2023 Sun Valley Writers Conference Fellow and a 2021 Glenn Balch Award recipient. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and is forthcoming or appears in Grist, Indiana Review, Zone 3, Florida Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Peauxdunque Review, West Trade Review, The Gravity of the Thing, and elsewhere.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. More at keithlesmeister.com

Review of “Radio Silence” by Holly Hilliard, published in Reckon Review

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Radio Silence by Holly Hilliard is a summertime story that takes place at Cole’s Resort. The main attraction is a waterslide – “twisted pink tunnel, opaque and rusted, that had been around since the seventies.” The story is narrated in the first person from the perspective of Anna who, at the time, was a teenager and had been “ogled since [she was] twelve.” This because of her “C-cup” which was the focus of her “male classmates” who “stared into [her] chest.” The physical details of the story don’t overwhelm the story, but they do play a critical role, which we see revealed as the story moves forward. Anna works at the Resort with her sister Mia who “…[attracted] lingering looks… desperate flirtations” because “there was just something about her.” Their manager at the Resort is Jackson Cole (of Cole’s Resorts), and his presence or conflict is the leadoff batter in the story. The opening line: “When I heard the news about Jackson Cole, I couldn’t stop thinking about the summer I turned sixteen—the summer I got a job at Cole’s Resort.” I’m a sucker for these narrative frameworks, in which a much older narrator looks back on events from their youth. This allows a kind of pinging back and forth between the narrator of now and the narrator of then, which, I think, provides a level of wisdom and maturity with which the narrator might use to share her story.

The story moves through space and time effortlessly. In one scene we’re at the girls’ house where we meet their parents, in the next we’re on top of the pink slide, in the next we’re on the slide itself, and so on. In each scene, conflicts emerge between the girls and their parents, the customers at the Resort, the sisters themselves, and – of course – don’t forget about Jackson Cole.

The situation of the story coupled with the easy-going nature of the prose were enough to propel me forward as a reader. There’s an ease of authenticity and voice—that elusive aspect of fiction writing that most or all fiction writers hope to achieve. That is, a voice so compelling as to keep readers reading regardless of subject matter or situation. That voice, that authenticity exists in this story, and it’s achieved, I think, through two main aspects: humor and wonderfully placed details. For instance, at the beginning of the story we get this wonderful description of the condition of the slide: “It cost a dollar to ride, even though it was old and much slower than it had been when I was younger, and most of our customers found it highly disappointing.” That could’ve been enough, but Hilliard moves forward with the reason for it being “much slower”: “The denim worn by many of the slide-goers caused the plastic to wear over time… there were no clothing requirements, so long as you wore something.” The detail of the “denim worn” and the addition of “so long as you wore something” places us readers in a very specific time and place. It lends a credibility to this already compelling voice. We know, for instance, this Resort is not located on Jersey Shore.

Another well-wrought aspect is the way Hilliard layers a current topic into the story. In this case a Me Too aspect. It’s difficult to write about current events or of-the-moment topics without sounding stilted or, perhaps, didactic. But Hilliard’s story, turns out, is a model for how one might achieve this layering of a current topic, while staying true to the story and its characters.

An excellent story that explores the full range of human emotion while also addressing the lingering implications of young women who’ve been mistreated and harmed by men in positions of power.

Read the story here.

Holly Hilliard is a graduate of the MFA program at NC State University, where she was the 2018 winner of the James Hurst Prize for Fiction. She now lives in Pittsburgh, PA. Find her online at hollyhilliard.com.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. More at keithlesmeister.com.

Review of “Ken & Sirina” by K.A. Polzin, published in The Forge Literary Magazine

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A flash piece whose tone and use of time and repetition allows readers to feel a genuine connection between and with the couple in question.

The story addresses the simple yet profound acknowledgment of growing older as a couple. Interspersed with humor and intimacy, the duration of the piece is over the course of an evening and a morning. It takes place on an Arctic cruise, during which the couple in question—Ken and Sirina—contemplate the decisions of a couple on vacation: Should we have one more glass of wine? What time should we go to bed? Will we make it to breakfast on time tomorrow morning? But when they share breakfast with a British couple, who go on about their children, Ken and Sirina leave the meal and discuss their own future as a childless couple (“They’d decided not to have kids, some twenty years before…”). Ken’s a “…don’t-think-about-it-unless-you-have-to kind of person.” But Sirina is not. So the two of them, Ken and Sirina—who now adorn their statements with “meine Damen und Herren”—are forced to confront their childlessness. They reach some conclusions (“…the healthy one can read to the dying one.”), they sip more wine (yes, wine immediately after breakfast), and they tease each other gently, while offering assurances to one another that are incomplete, perhaps unnecessary, but wholly comforting.

A charming flash piece marked by moments of intimacy and humor. Read it here.

K. A. Polzin’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Subtropics, Gulf Coast, Wigleaf, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2023 and the Fractured Lit Anthology 3. Polzin’s short humor has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here.

Review of “The Smell of Muskoka Pomade” by Jacob Anthony Moniz, published in Southeast Review

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Here’s a flash fiction piece set in the tucked away corners of a bar. While there are multiple people stuffed into a booth, the points of interest in the story revolve around the narrator and his friend/former lover Adrián who, as the narrator observes, “does his best to hide his disappointment,” but the narrator “take[s] notice of the way his face drops.” Something, in other words, is going on with Adrián and the narrator—the two aren’t aligned with one another, something is off, and now they are speaking or not speaking around each other in ways that feel unfortunate in the way that most simple miscommunications feel unfortunate, especially in retrospect when one might realize the importance of a direct statement or question. Instead, the narrator shares with us readers: “I turn to Adrián for some sign that this isn’t where our night is headed…” but it is in fact where their night is headed as “…each take a pill and raise it in what I suppose is a bold, subversive take on a toast.”

What’s brilliant about this flash piece is that these few hundred words open us up to an entire relationship. We feel the torrent of emotion around these two, their past, their present, their potential future. We also feel what it’s like to satisfy a primal need to alleviate any emotional hurt we might be feeling at the moment—to reach for some physical antidote from whatever or whoever might be within our immediate proximity.

A melancholic piece made more so by the characters’ inability to communicate, and their turning to drugs and others to alleviate their emotional wounds.

Read the story here.

Jacob Anthony Moniz (he/him) is a writer and visual artist from California. He holds degrees from UC Santa Cruz, NYU, and the University of Notre Dame. His writing has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Penumbra, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Ocotillo Review, The Whisky Blot, and Southeast Review, among other journals and publications.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. His most recent work is published or forthcoming in Bennington Review, december magazine, and Terrain.