Absolute Fiction

The stories in this collection, three nominated for the Pushcart Prize for short fiction published in small literary magazines, vary widely in length, genre, and subject. Two stories are short-shorts and three are novellas, with the others of conventional short story length. In these frames of different sizes, characters contend with realistic, surrealistic, and fantastic obstacles in contemporary life. In the farcical “Della’s Motivation,” a junior executive discovers sinister paranormal secrets while trying to advance her career at a behavioral motivation facility in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In “A Spike in the Head,” a young reporter visiting her grandmother inadvertently discovers a family secret involving abortion, murder, and surprising acts of compassion. “An Octopus Vase,” “Only All the Dead,” and two other stories portray crises in religious faith, particularly Roman Catholicism. Raucous, irreverent humor prevails in “And Marion Never Looked Lovelier,” in which a centenarian trillionaire produces a bizarre silent film starring long-dead actors. Beyond subject, theme, and genre, “Absolute Fiction” presents narratives rich in the local colors of upstate New York, northern New England, Nova Scotia, and Ireland, including stories featuring endurance running and bicycling. The collection’s anchor stories are “All the Weeks of Easter” and “The Stillness Caused by Trains.” The former, inspired by the tragic abduction and murder of a young woman in the New York’s Adirondack Mountains, explores the class- and gender-specific social customs and rituals that have developed in the context of mournful searching for victims of senseless brutality. “Stillness,” a seamless minimalist pieces, presents an hour in a young man’s long-avoided return to his paternal grandparents’ home, poised on the very edge of New York’s major east-west railroad tracks. With ten stories published here for the first time, the collection’s two introductory pieces present perspectives on the contemporary literary and genre scene, discussing such topics as advanced academic degrees in creative writing, minimalist and encyclopedic realism, and the pragmatics and tribulations of submitting fiction that struggling writers especially will find interesting and practical.