The Jewbird by Bernard Malamud

Anti-Semeets.

Bernard Malamud does it again! He is quickly becoming one of my favorite short-story writers, and The Jewbird is another testament to his literary talents. I have said this in other reviews, but it bears repeating: Malamud’s prose has an effortless smoothness to it. A kind of simple eloquence where you just fall into the rhythm of the story and suddenly you’re hooked. 

On top of the beautiful writing, Malamud is simply a terrific storyteller with a vivid, slightly mischievous imagination. Only he could introduce a Yiddish-speaking bird who flies into the apartment of a Jewish immigrant family in New York City and somehow make the whole thing feel completely natural. The magical realism is so grounded in human emotion that you forget it’s magical at all.

The author uses this fantastical setup and allegory to explore tougher themes, especially Jewish displacement and the painful, complicated reality of Jewish self-hatred. The father’s hostility toward the bird isn’t just for comic relief or coming from a place of annoyance; rather, it’s internalized loathing, a deep discomfort with his own heritage that he projects onto this feathery outsider. Malamud never hits you over the head with it but the tension between the father’s shame and the bird’s desperate need for safety becomes more and more heartbreaking as the story unfolds.

For Malamud, humor and sorrow are often intertwined. The dark comedy keeps you grinning, but there’s an unmistakable ache underneath it all. When the climax arrives and the bird is cast out (similar to the pogroms), Malamud lands another one of his signature emotional punches right to the gut. He knows exactly how to twist the knife with restraint and grace, leaving you a little stunned by how much weight a story about a talking bird can carry.

Another powerful, unforgettable finish from a writer who makes heartbreak feel strangely beautiful.

You can read this story HERE.

Schwarzschild Radius by Connie Willis

That is one mighty stache.

I’m a little confused about the decision to include Schwarzschild Radius by Connie Willis in The Big Book of Science Fiction (edited by Jeff VanderMeer). It really doesn’t have the usual fingerprints of the genre. Honestly, it reads far more like historical fiction than sci-fi. Sure, there are mentions of astrophysics, black holes, and even a letter from Einstein, but that’s pretty much where the science-fiction angle begins and ends.

The bulk of the story is devoted to the grim, claustrophobic horrors of WWI trench warfare. The narrator recounts his time at the front to a scientist named Travers, who’s researching Karl Schwarzschild, a famous German physicist whose work shaped Einstein’s theory of relativity and who died during the war. The protagonist’s connection to Schwarzschild comes from a chance encounter in the communication trenches, where he and his comrade Müller huddled under freezing skies and barbed wire.

Travers is absolutely riveted by the tale for the sake of his paper. Me? Not so much. I kept waiting for some striking sci-fi twist or bigger speculative element, but it never really materializes. As a piece of historical fiction, it’s decent enough. The biggest takeaway was learning Schwarzschild's influence on Einstein and his theories of gravity without knowing black holes existed (hence, the title). 

Cool, cool.

The First Seven Years by Bernard Malamud

Shoes can be fixed. Hearts? Not so easily.

After reading the wonderful The Magic Barrel, my ADHD/hyper-fixation naturally pushed me to dive deeper into Bernard Malamud’s short stories, and The First Seven Years did not disappoint. Malamud is such an effortlessly gifted storyteller. The prose just glides along, and before you know it, you’re fully wrapped up in the little dramas of ordinary people trying their best to live the American dream. 

What I especially enjoyed here is how Malamud opens with rich, immediate characterization and then lets the plot unfold from that foundation. It’s a refreshing reversal of the usual formula. Right from the start, we are encouraged to sympathize with Feld, a humble shoemaker who believes education as the key to success and upward social mobility. He has big dreams for his daughter. Miriam. and is determined to match her with a respectable college student who brings his shoes in for repair.

This is where Malamud cleverly plays with a longstanding Jewish stereotype: the idea that Jews are preoccupied with money or material success. He uses it not to reinforce the stereotype, but to expose how these expectations shape Feld’s worldview. Feld’s obsession with securing his daughter a match in a higher social bracket reflects the pressures within the Jewish immigrant community in post-WWII America: to climb, to assimilate, to “make it.” When Feld finally realizes that moral worth doesn’t correlate neatly with financial standing, the moment lands with even more poignancy because we’ve watched him chase that stereotype so earnestly.

And then there’s Sobel, Feld’s apprentice. He's a Jewish refugee from Poland whose traumatic past (the implication being that he escaped the Nazi Death camps), low-economic status, and impulsive behavior complicate Feld's plans to running a successful shoe repair business. His role adds nuance to the story’s social hierarchy: he is poor, displaced, and rough around the edges, yet still deeply moral and sincere. 

My one small gripe is Sobel’s romantic declaration. While honorable in intent, it definitely comes across as a little creepy. He’s been in love with Miriam for years, watching her grow up and waiting for his moment. If you pause to do the math, it suggests he may have been pining when she was still very young, so yeah...But maybe I’m nitpicking. Ultimately, the heart of the story lies in Feld’s moral and spiritual transformation, as he learns that wealth and status have nothing to do with integrity or love. And in classic Malamud fashion, that realization feels both timeless and deeply human.

You can read this story HERE.

The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara

$1000 for toy sailboats? Hell nah.

Toni Cade Bambara has such a knack for writing in the voices of Black children. These voices feel authentic, funny, sharp, and delightfully irreverent. The Lesson is a perfect example. The narrator, a young Black girl with plenty of attitude and zero patience for adult nonsense, is wildly entertaining. Her witty side comments and no-filter observations are hilarious but they are also Bambara’s way of using humor as resistance. The jokes and lively narration push back against the dehumanizing weight of racism, showing how laughter can become a small but powerful form of dissent. Through this voice, Bambara reminds us that even though Black life is shaped by inequality, it still remains vibrant, complex, full of joy and bite.

Race, humor, and subjectivity collide in this story that’s funny and profound all at once. The plot itself is simple: a group of neighborhood kids is whisked off to an upscale toy store by Miss Moore, the educated, socially conscious woman who has appointed herself responsible for teaching them, well, a lesson that will become important for their survival as they get older. Essentially, she wants them to see the economic gap they have been shielded from by childhood innocence and sheer lack of context. There is a huge disparity between black wealth and white wealth. Oh, don't forget that no matter how hard you work, you likely won't have any social mobility due to systematic racism. Heavy stuff to to teach a kid, for sure. But by filtering everything through the narrator’s hilarious commentary and her friends’ chaotic energy, Bambara keeps the tone lively while still landing the deeper message.

Telling the story through the eyes of this sharp-tongued, skeptical kid allows humor to expose the structures of inequality without flattening or moralizing them. The comedy doesn’t undercut the seriousness; rather it highlights black oppression, making the lesson Miss Moore wants to teach resonate even more.

You can read this story HERE.

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

Danse macabre.

My original plan was to post a Halloween double-feature review with The Masque of the Red Death, but that obviously didn’t happen. Now it’s nearly December, which makes this a bit late for spooky season, but whatever. Edgar Allan Poe is welcome any time of year, so here we go.

One of the few certainties in this life is death. Rich or poor, death does not discriminate. It is the one thing none of us can outrun. Still, we love to pretend otherwise. Poe taps into that illusion with Prospero’s partygoers, who barricade themselves inside a lavish, fortified abbey while a deadly plague devastates the world outside. They convince themselves they’re untouchable, safe behind stone walls and silken fabrics.

And then the mysterious stranger arrives.

This is where the story’s creep factor really kicks in. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way the mysterious figure simply appears in the middle of their revelry. Silent, uninvited, and dressed like a walking corpse. No one knows how he got in. No one speaks to him. They just see him and suddenly the whole atmosphere shifts from uninhibited decadence to incomprehensible fear. Poe's inimitable brand of horror comes from the building upon this gradually increasing fear that these people can no longer hide from their mortality.  This slow realization that death has literally slipped through the cracks and is now calmly walking among them. 

There's plenty of symbolism and allegory to unpack here but what keeps me coming back to this story is the gothic atmosphere: that creeping sense of inevitability, the haunting visuals, and the delicious dread that only Poe seems able to conjure.

You can read this story HERE. 

The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

Pick a card, any card!

Although I didn’t care much for Angel Levine, Bernard Malamud completely won me over with The Magic Barrel, which totally lives up to the hype. The writing is smooth, flowing with such ease with a climax that is both bizarre and profoundly moving, culminating in one of the most unforgettable final sentences I’ve ever come across in a short story:

“Around the corner, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted prayers for the dead.”

Fantastic stuff. 

Of course, context matters, so let me elaborate a little bit more on why this story resonates on such a deep emotional and spiritual level without spoiling too much. 

Blending Jewish folklore with a shimmer of magical realism, Malamud pulls off something remarkable. The story walks a delicate line between humor and aching sadness, especially in the way it explores the protagonist’s loneliness and wavering spiritual grounding. The plot is simple enough: Finkle, a rabbi-in-training, reluctantly hires the matchmaker Pinye Salzman to find a wife. With his diminutive stature and horn-rimmed glasses, he is an elusive, eccentric figure whom the narrator playfully calls a “commercial cupid,” “Pan,” and “trickster.” Those nicknames fit him perfectly. His methods involve embellishment, misdirection, and a kind of theatrical manipulation that increasingly irritates Finkle, who only wants honesty but instead finds himself tangled in half-truths and emotional confusion.

This exhausting search for a partner becomes more than a series of awkward dates. It becomes a crisis of faith. Finkle’s disappointment with Salzman’s tomfoolery and his inability to find the “right” match begins eroding his confidence not just as a future rabbi, but as a person searching for meaning. The emptiness he feels grows heavier, pushing him into a fog of religious doubt, insecurity, and spiritual despair. His loneliness becomes almost metaphysical, an ache of the soul.

And then something miraculous happens. Finkle discovers a photograph Saltzman left behind. An image of a young woman that grips him instantly and almost supernaturally. He becomes consumed by the need to meet her, as though the photo has awakened something dormant within him. A spark. A longing. Perhaps even a sense of destiny. Ironically, the moment he finally wants Salzman’s guidance, the trickster vanishes. It’s unclear (deliberately so) whether Salzman is a flesh-and-blood matchmaker or a folkloric figure who slips between the spiritual and physical worlds.

The ending brings all of these threads together with a beautiful mix of irony and transcendence. Finkle meets the mysterious woman, but what he encounters is not the simple, romantic resolution he imagined. Instead, he steps into a moment that forces him to confront the complexity of love, brokenness, and grace. The final image of Salzman chanting prayers for the dead is haunting and somewhat comedic: Is he mourning the past selves they must shed? Is he blessing their union? Is he signaling that love, to be real, requires the death of illusion before rebirth can occur? Could these prayers be asking God's forgiveness for these two lonely souls? 

You decide.

In that single gesture, the story ties together its central themes. Faith is not steady. It’s something tested, lost, and rediscovered in unexpected ways. Love is not a neat fix but a transformative, often painful force. Redemption comes when Finkle finally opens his heart, not to perfection, but to imperfection and vulnerability, which are the very things he once resisted.

It’s an ending that’s ironic, mystical, and deeply human all at once.

You can read this story HERE. 

Night Women by Edwidge Danticat

A Fruitful Gathering by Raymond LaFaille

What struck me immediately was the unnamed narrator’s intimate and powerful voice. Her presence on the page feels vivid, all encompassing. She speaks with an aching and fresh lyricism that never tries to beautify her suffering but instead captures it with an honesty so poetic that her trauma can only be expressed in metaphors. Her voice is threaded with pain and exhaustion, but also with a fierce, unwavering love for her son. It’s this blend of tenderness and desperation that gives the story its emotional gravity.

On the surface, the plot is simple. But nothing about the world she describes is simple. The narrator lives in a cramped one-bedroom shack in Haiti with her young son, separated only by a thin sheet as she tucks him into bed before another of her gentleman callers arrives. As the title indicates, she's one of the many Night Women of Haiti that must do whatever is necessary to provide for their family. However, the harsh reality of her life as a prostitute isn’t sensationalized; rather, it’s poetically dramatized, reflecting the lived experiences of many Haitian women in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Danticat gives these women visibility, dignity, and a voice. She highlights not only the crushing weight of poverty in Haiti but also the unwavering resilience required of women to survive it, especially when survival demands painful sacrifices. The narrator is constantly navigating this impossible terrain. As a mother, she is trying to shield her son from the harsh reality of her work, but she also knows that she can’t protect him forever. She’s painfully aware that he’s growing older, more perceptive, and that one day he will understand what happens after he falls asleep on the other side of that thin sheet.

This realization adds another layer of heartbreak to the story. She tries desperately to preserve his innocence, whispering stories and soothing him into dreams, hoping sleep will spare him from witnessing her nightly burden. But beneath that hope is the fear of the moment her son’s childhood will collide with her reality. It’s this emotional tension, this push and pull between love and necessity, that makes the narrator feel so achingly real.

What elevates the story even further is the narrator’s poetic imagination. There’s a rhythm and unique cadence to her thoughts; a softness that contrasts sharply with her dire circumstances. Danticat also sprinkles in myth and folklore that add to the elements of magical realism. Lines like, “There is a place in Ville Rose where ghost women ride the crests of waves while brushing the stars out of their hair,” remind us that even in the harshest lives, imagination can be a refuge. These mythic fragments don’t take us out of the story, quite the contrary. They deepen it, revealing how the narrator holds onto beauty wherever she can find it.

Night Women might only be a few pages, but it feels expansive: emotionally, thematically, and lyrically. It’s a testament to Danticat’s ability to take a single voice and turn it into a haunting, unforgettable presence. 

I really need to read more from this author, pronto.

How the Marquis Got His Coat Back by Neil Gaiman

Myconids - The Mushroom people.

I am becoming more convinced that Neil Gaiman is a far stronger short-story writer than he is a novelist, and How the Marquis Got His Coat Back just keeps proving my point. It’s a dark, twisted fantasy packed with intrigue, oddities, and a delightfully eccentric cast. Gaiman’s imagination isn’t just present here, it’s doing somersaults.

The premise is wonderfully strange: the Marquis de Carabas, a mysterious nobleman of questionable morality, awakens from death in a chamber rapidly filling with water. Before he can properly process being alive again, he realizes his beloved (and magically significant) coat has gone missing. First order of business: escape imminent drowning. Second: track down the coat that’s practically an extension of his identity. It’s a fantastic hook, and the opening scene grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go.

What impresses me most is how effortlessly Gaiman conjures a world that feels both fully realized and deeply bizarre without bogging the story down in exposition. He gives you just enough world-building to stay grounded. No small feat given this is a place where humans co-exist with anthropomorphized elephants and mushroom people. His imagination feels boundless, but he never lets it overshadow the momentum of the narrative. The writing is smooth and elegant, propelled by a storyteller who knows exactly when to dazzle and when to get out of the way. It’s playful, brisk, and wonderfully weird from start to finish. 

The Leap by Donald Barthelme

Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan in Waiting for Godot.

Donald Barthelme seems to be channeling his inner Samuel Beckett in The Leap, a short story composed entirely of dialogue. We’re dropped into this fragmented, often delightfully incoherent conversation between two men who manage to talk about nothing and everything at once. One of their recurring debates is the big one: the existence of God and what it really means to take a “leap of faith” in a world that can be equal parts cruel and inexplicable. One man is a believer and the other needs a bit more convincing, referred to as the “double-sided” man. As a contrarian at heart, Barthelme has always loved playing with dualities, irony and paradoxes so the label feels very on-brand.

In classic Barthelme fashion, nothing is straightforward. He nudges the reader into searching for meaning in this verbal tennis match, and just when you think you’re finally onto something he yanks the rug out and veers into a totally different direction. You can practically hear him laughing somewhere. His usual bag of tricks is on full display here, including playful repetition, which fuels the story’s frolicsome little tête-à-tête. Sure, there’s some genuinely witty banter, but the philosophical digressions start piling up fast. To be honest, a good chunk of it went right over my head although I caught glimpses of hermeneutics, phenomenology, inequality, God-as-artist musings, and the usual science-vs-religion showdown. There’s even a Kierkegaard reference that feels like a sly wink to his earlier piece, Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel, which could make for a fun comparison if you’re feeling brave enough.

My favorite moment comes when the cynical, double-minded man challenges the logic of the so-called “Divine Plan.” He points out that if humans keep propagating at an exponential rate (because really, what else are we doing?), we’re heading straight for a claustrophobic dystopian nightmare:

“Because there’s not going to be any room to fucking move, man, do you follow me? There’s not going to be any room to fucking sneeze, without you sneezing on somebody.”

It’s one of the few moments that genuinely made me laugh. I only wish the story leaned into that kind of humor more often instead of leaving me tangled in its more evasive, puzzle-box chatter. But that’s Barthelme for you. Forever flippant, forever perplexing, and somehow still has me coming back to his work even though it might not always hit the mark.

The Finkelstein 5 by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Say Their Names.

In the wake of racial injustice and the BLM protests, The Finkelstein 5 by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah feels painfully relevant. Almost uncomfortably so. The hardest part is realizing that the story isn’t tapping into a distant historical moment; it’s speaking to a reality that hasn’t changed nearly as much as it should have. Police brutality and racial violence against Black Americans continue, and under the Trump regime, that tension and fear feels amplified. The story’s sadness, frustration, and simmering anger permeates beneath the surface, then erupts in an ending that’s as tragic as it is inevitable because we have seen so many versions of this ending play out in real life. 

One of the aspects that struck me most was the way the young Black protagonist must constantly calibrate his “acceptable” level of Blackness just to move safely through the world. He’s created a scale from 1.0 to 10.0 with 1.0 being the version of himself most palatable to white society, 10.0 being fully, unapologetically Black but also perceived as dangerous. That constant internal negotiation, that ever-present fear of how one’s Blackness will be interpreted, shapes every detail of his daily life. As someone who identifies as Black and is familiar with the mental gymnastics required to navigate predominantly white spaces, this portrayal hit close to home. It’s both surreal and deeply validating to see that experience reflected so clearly on the page.

At the center of the story is a court case involving a white man who brutally killed five Black children with a chainsaw (hence the title). He justifies his action in court by claiming that he feared for his life and those of his children whom the other black children were allegedly antagonizing outside the public library. It’s impossible not to think of so many high-profile cases of black people being senselessly murdered by police or racist bigots. The George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin case seems most relevant here, hovering in the background. Adjei-Brenyah doesn’t shy away from calling out the grotesque failures of a judicial system that repeatedly upholds white supremacy. The story isn’t subtle about this at all, nor should it be. It forces you to confront the ugliness directly, and in doing so, it becomes a sharp political commentary on black oppression in America, a critical indictment of the systems that continue to fail us.

The Finkelstein 5 is powerful not because it shocks (although it certainly does) but because it resonates deeply with America in the here and now. Adjei-Brenyah captures the fear, exhaustion, and quiet resilience that define what it means to be Black in a society that too often refuses to see our humanity. It’s heartbreaking, furious, and unapologetically loud in all the ways it needs to be, making it one of the most memorable and emotionally charged pieces I’ve read in a while.

The Mad Lomansneys by Frank O'Connor

Connemara Landscape by John Skelton

The year is almost over and I have  fallen behind on the Deal Me In Challenge (no surprise there). That being said, I somehow managed to read and review more short stories in 2025 than in any other year of my life, so I’m calling that a win. Still, it would be nice to actually finish all 52 stories within the allotted time frame at least once. Here’s hoping I can stay the course with the last handful on the list.

My latest draw was the Queen of Diamonds, which landed me with The Mad Lomasneys by Frank O’Connor. I wish I had more glowing things to say, but this one was disappointing and just dragged for me. The whole boy meets girl plot ("will they or won’t they?”) become tiresome pretty quickly and by the end I felt more impatient than emotionally invested. Sure, the romantic misadventures of Rita Lomasney and Ned Lowry touch on some big themes like gender roles, female autonomy, Catholic guilt and family expectations. Unfortunately, the melodrama overshadowed the nuance for me.

The characters are so exaggerated they start to feel like caricatures rather than people you might actually meet in an Irish village. And maybe it’s unfair, but when I think of early-20th-century Irish realism, I can’t help comparing O’Connor to James Joyce. Both were writing about the same cultural moment: tight-knit communities, Catholic moral codes, the quiet tensions simmering beneath everyday life. But Joyce tends to capture those dynamics with a sharper, more restrained touch. In Dubliners, his characters feel painfully and beautifully real: flawed, boxed in by circumstance and rendered with such interior depth that even a fleeting scene feels alive. O’Connor, on the other hand, often leans toward broader strokes, which doesn't always land effectively. Bigger emotions, more overt humor, more theatrical personalities. Sometimes that works wonderfully (I actually enjoyed The Drunkard, especially its sly, ironic ending), but in The Mad Lomasneys, the larger-than-life antics just started to feel a bit much.

By the time I reached the last page, I honestly didn’t care who ended up with whom. Maybe O’Connor will win me over with the next story I read. There’s still hope.

Oh well. Onward to the next card. Let’s see if I can actually finish this challenge before the clock runs out.

Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead by Carmen Maria Machado

One ticket to Hades, please.

I went into this one pretty skeptical. A short story told through a Kickstarter page sounded, at best, like a quirky experiment prone to gimmicks that would wear thin after a few paragraphs. But somehow, somehow, Carmen Maria Machado not only makes it work, she makes it sing. She uses the Kickstarter page structure (updates, backer tiers, reward descriptions, etc) as a meaningful storytelling engine rather than a novelty. Every section feels intentional and she moves through the constraints of that format with total confidence.

What really surprised me though wasn’t the cleverness of the form. It was how deeply emotional the story becomes despite (or maybe because of) those constraints. Hidden between the tongue-in-cheek project descriptions, campaign updates and comments section is a story about the complex relationship between two sisters with a speculative twist: the narrator/older sister launches a Kickstarter campaign to help fund her journey to the Underworld in order to rescue her younger sister who has a tendency to be a reckless, party girl.  Apparently Hades is known for throwing some really great parties down there. 

Machado lets the emotional weight creep in slowly, almost quietly, until you suddenly realize you are in far deeper than you thought. By the time the story reaches its heartbreaking conclusion, it lands like a punch right to the gut. The kind that knocks the wind out of you even though you saw it coming. It’s rare to find a piece of writing that balances structural playfulness with such genuine emotional resonance, but Machado threads that needle perfectly. This story is a reminder that innovative storytelling doesn’t have to sacrifice heart. In this case, it actually amplifies it.

This was such a refreshing and memorable read. I can’t wait to dive into more of this author's work.

How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar

Don't forget to brush.

There are some graphic scenes in How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar involving a toothbrush and a gag-reflex test, so if you're a bit squeamish, this story might not be your jam. But if you can push through that bit, you will discover a surprisingly solid dystopian coming-of-age story that is much more interested in the characters than in any science-fiction elements. Honestly, if this hadn’t appeared in "The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2015" anthology edited by Joe Hill, I’m not sure I would’ve labeled it sci-fi at all.

The story follows the narrator as she reflects on her time at a mandatory summer camp. Here, children learn "Life Skills" before re-integrating back into society. Her best friend, Cee, is the resident rule-breaker, refusing to toe the line and constantly challenging the system. The narrator, caught between conformity and rebellion, gets swept up in Cee’s unpredictable orbit, and the fallout is both tragic and emotionally resonant. Her unresolved grief forms the emotional center-piece of the story.

I reviewed a piece of flash-fiction last year by the same author called "The Huntress", which was a tiny-sample size of her literary talents.  After finishing this story, I still can’t quite decide how I feel about her work overall. There’s certainly a lot to appreciate here: the tight storytelling, a complex emotional arc, impressive nuance, but something about this particular story just didn’t fully land for me. Still, I get the sense that if I keep reading her stuff, I’ll eventually stumble onto a piece that really knocks it out of the park.

The Great Hug by Donald Barthelme

 

Pin Lady is apricklededee

What happens when the Balloon Man and the Pin Lady meet? According to the sardonic narrator, they are destined to embrace and it will be a "frightening" scene to behold:  "It's in the cards, in the stars, in the entrails of sacred animals." 

It's like a twisted meet-cute story where the author is the only one in on the joke while the reader is kept completely in the dark and doesn't know what the hell is going on. 

In The Great Hug, Donald Barthelme returns to the balloon motif but this time, the unconventional, the fantastic and the absurd collide into a madly digressive narrative with no ostensible purpose. It defies interpretation and conveys no message. It's a cacophony of noise and the existential angst that is usually amusing in his stories, comes across as embittered. Or maybe that's the point? 

Either way, I didn't care for this story at all.

The Emerald by Donald Barthelme

Diamonds are a little ordinary.

There is quirky absurdist fiction and then there's Donald Barthelme's indelible postmodern approach that is completely bonkers, a total acid trip. Not many authors can pull off quirky absurdism so effectively and here it’s full-tilt, unfiltered chaos. I’m fully convinced Barthelme dabbled in psychedelics while writing this because the entire thing reads like an acid trip narrated by a mischievous librarian. The humdrum and colloquial prose makes the absurdity feel even more ridiculous. Wordplay, puns, pastiche, collage—this is quintessential Barthelme madness. Donald Barthelme once again embraces playful nonsense, where clichés are recycled with such sincerity that they become delightful again. 

We’ve got Mad Moll, a witch who is somehow both magical and yet underwhelming in her powers. She gives birth to a 7,000-pound, 35-carat emerald after being impregnated by Deus Lunus, the literal Man in the Moon. As one does. 

The emerald itself talks like a precocious child, dropping existential one-liners when it isn’t being stolen, coveted, or rolled around like a sentient gemstone bowling ball. Naturally, everyone wants to steal the giant gem-baby, including Vandermaster, a mage who seeks immortality because he grew up poor eating nothing but gruel. 

This whole world is a fallen, morally bankrupt funhouse where the marvelous is rendered mundane. The author utilizes mythology as source as moral enlightenment but the story is narrated like someone muttering to themselves on the subway. Dialogue does most of the heavy lifting, though half the time you’re not entirely sure who is speaking or why. This is done on purpose to further obfuscate meaning, compounding the absurdism, creating even more confusion. The author seems to trust that the reader will learn to swim in the nonsense or drown, which might be more accurate. 

There's a bunch of side characters that drift in and out of the story along with multiple subplots. We also get media politics with Lily the intrepid reporter that is tasked by her cantankerous editor (Lather, the editor-King) to investigate the whole debacle. 

At one point Lily asks Moll: 

“What is the meaning of the emerald?” and Moll responds with: “It means, one, that the gods are not yet done with us.”

That's deep. I guess?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Mary Magdalene’s foot shows up for an interview. Yes, just the foot. Vandermaster stole it from a Carthusian monastery, as one does in a story like this and Moll’s sidekick Soapbox ends up using it to kill him. I swear I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Moll’s final philosophical epiphany is poetic and profound although is it merely hollow pontification?

“We resume the scrabble for existence, in the sweet of the here and now.” 

Which is basically Barthelme telling us to enjoy the weirdness and embrace the absurdity of life because it's often all we’ve got. It's a heroic act to actively choose to live in a chaotic and absurd world where nothing makes sense. 

10/10 would read again, if only to confirm that yes, Mary Magdalene’s foot really did get interviewed by a reporter.

Rif by Donald Barthelme

You can't really dust for vomit.

The disjuncture found in Donald Barthelme's fragmented short-stories can often be frustrating to read (at least for me), usually with the deliberate aim of distorting all possible meaning. Sometimes this approach works swimmingly and sometimes it comes across as random gibberish, which is unfortunately the case here in Rif. 

The story is basically a never-ending volley of dialogue between two characters, Hettie and Rhoda, who are (appropriately enough) riffing on each other ad nauseum. It’s Barthelme doing his usual Barthelme thing: postmodern experimentation cranked up to 11. Tangents and non-sequiturs are the name of the game but it all feels like nonsensical jargon to me. I’m sure there’s some deep commentary on language, perception or phenomenology buried in there, maybe even a sly wink about how interpretation itself is futile. However, I couldn't be bothered to wade through this failed experiment. 

Rules of the Game by Amy Tan

The Double Attack from the East and West Shores.

My mom loves Amy Tan. I’m talking multiple rereads of The Joy Luck Club, well-worn paperback, folded corners, writing in the margins, underlining key passages and the occasional sticky note that says “so true!” in Chinese. It’s one of her comfort books: part motherly wisdom, part emotional catharsis, part “see, this is what it was like for me growing up with your grandmother in this country." 

And honestly, I get it. As an author who captures the push-and-pull between Chinese immigrant parents and their American-born kids, Amy Tan speaks to people like my mom. People who lived that cultural tightrope firsthand. But embarrassingly, I hadn’t actually read anything by Tan until now. Chalk it up to my lifelong rebellion against anything my mom told me I should do because she knows what's best for me. 

Rules of the Game is subtle, smart, and has a quietness that sneaks up on you. It’s about Waverly Place Jong, a precocious girl growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown who becomes a chess prodigy. Her name (“Waverly Place”) feels symbolic, caught between two worlds. Chess, of course, becomes a metaphor for life, for control, for navigating a world where everyone’s playing by different rules.

There’s a great scene that really hit me: when Waverly’s mother flips through the chess instruction book and mutters, “This American rules.” It’s such a small moment, but perfectly encapsulates the juxtaposition between Chinese culture and American values.  No one explains the “rules” of America to immigrants. It's often filled with hardship and sacrifice (like in chess). You have to learn them the hard way, piece by piece.  It’s both funny and heartbreaking, the way Tan captures that gap between generations: the daughter mastering the literal rules of chess and the mother mastering the invisible rules of survival.

There's more to this story than the complex relationship between the young girl and her mother, even though it's done quite well. It’s about every argument, every misunderstanding, every proud-but-stubborn moment between two people who love each other deeply but can’t quite say it out loud. Basically, it’s like every dinner conversation I’ve ever had with my mom.

Maybe it’s time I finally borrow my mom's beat up copy of The Joy Luck Club, though let’s be honest, she’ll probably just use that as an excuse to “accidentally” quiz me on it later.

The Way She Smiles, the Things She Says by Greg Egan

 

Companion.

I  am a big fan of Greg Egan. The guy’s basically a one-man sci-fi think tank. His short fiction usually blows my mind in the best way: intricate ideas, sharp prose, and the kind of brainy what-if scenarios that make you question the fabric of reality. I’ve sung his praises plenty of times on this blog. He’s the rare author who makes science fiction feel fresh again. I like to think of him as the Australian Ted Chiang, just with a little more math and physics thrown in for good measure.

So imagine my disappointment when I read The Way She Smiles, the Things She Says. To put it gently, this one’s a real stinker. It's awful with no redeeming qualities. I still can't believe this is the same author than penned such fantastic stories like "The Infinite Assassin" or "Learning to Be Me." It feels like an imposter. 

Taken from his Artifacts short-story collection, the razor thin-premise revolves around a sexually depraved father who’s jealous of his son’s relationship with a sexbot. The whole thing reads like a late-night fever dream of bad ideas stitched together with the faintest trace of Egan’s usual precision.

What really sinks it is the hollowness underneath. It flirts with big themes such as toxic masculinity, AI companionship and fractured family dynamics, but never commits to saying anything meaningful about them. The rampant vulgarity and misogyny also serve no purpose, only adding to the cringe-factor. Egan’s best stories hum with ideas and emotional resonance; this one just hums with half-baked ideas and bad writing. If you ever wondered what Greg Egan’s version of a trainwreck looks like, well, here it is.

A Sudden Story by Robert Coover

Take that, sour breath!

Robert Coover has been on my literary radar forever—one of those big name short story writers form the '80s that you keep hearing about never quite get around to reading. I finally decided to change that and started with A Sudden Story, which, in hindsight, was probably a mistake. It's like starting a meal with the mint they give you after dinner at a fancy restaurant.

The story is, well, sudden. Like, “wait, that’s it?” kind of sudden. It's only a single paragraph. 

I tend to be apprehensive around super-short stories because it's very difficult to pull off successfully without veering into gimmick territory or fizzling out as an intellectual exercise in futility.  Sadly, this one leans more toward the latter.

I think Coover might be trying to mess around with classical archetypies (hero vs dragon tropes or dig at something deeper about storytelling itself, but if there’s hidden meaning here, it went right over my head The word “sudden” and it's derivations keep popping up like it’s important, but…important how? 

Your guess is as good as mine.

To be fair, it’s hard to pack emotional depth into something that could fit on a sticky note. The result isn’t bad, just kind of innocuous. You read it, shrug, and move on with your day. More of a literary palate cleanser than a full-course meal.

You can read this story HERE. 

Doggerland by Kaliane Bradley

The river styx.

After a lengthy hiatus from posting short-story reviews, I have returned just in time for Halloween! Doggerland by Kaliane Bradley is wonderfully eerie and atmospheric, which is perfect reading for the spooky season. 

The story's odd premise revolves around a lighthouse deep within a remote English heath, surrounded by lush greenery and thick fog. The narrator, a solitary lighthouse keeper, has just taken on a new apprentice to assist with the watch but for what purpose, exactly? Without giving too much away, let’s just say that not everything is as it seems and those spectral figures drifting across the heath may have roots in Greek mythology.

What I enjoyed most is that Doggerland doesn’t rely on jump scares or cheap shocks. The author successfully builds a quiet, creepy existential dread without succumbing to the usual pratfalls of supernatural horror. I am not familiar Kaliane Bradley's work although this story did win the VS Pritchett Short Story Prize in 2022, which is pretty swell. 

You can read this story HERE.

Sing a Song of Sixpence by Agatha Christie

The Queen was in the parlor, eating bread an honey.

This month’s Agatha Christie short story pick, Sing a Song of Sixpence, turned out to be a bit of a letdown. Not bad, just...a little forgettable. It lacks the twisty, spellbinding flair we know Dame Agatha is more than capable of delivering. Instead, we get a rather subdued tale that meanders to an underwhelming conclusion. Maybe not featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, soured my overall enjoyment. 

The story follows Sir Edward Palliser, a retired criminologist whose quiet life is interrupted by a visit from an old flame. The most disturbing part of the whole story is that she was 17 years old when they were romantically involved while he much older. Yikes. Anyways, she wants him to investigate her wealthy aunt’s suspicious death, which the police have already chalked up as unsolvable. She's convinced one of her siblings is behind it, and Edward reluctantly agrees to step in, perhaps out of guilt or a long-forgotten sense of chivalry.

The mystery itself feels pretty thin and despite a somewhat promising setup, there’s very little tension or urgency. The resolution hinges on a conveniently remembered nursery rhyme, which feels a bit too neat and tidy for my liking. All in all, Sing a Song of Sixpence remains innocuous and it’s definitely not Christie at her best. Here's hoping next month's selections showcase Agatha Christie's talents in full force!

Ingots of Gold by Agatha Christie

Shiver me timbers.

I can hardly believe it’s already June. How is the year halfway over?! Time is zipping by way too fast for my liking. On the bright side, a new month means diving (pun intended) into more Agatha Christie short stories, thanks to the reading challenge hosted by Fanda ClassicLit.

This month's pick is Ingots of Gold from the Thirteen Problems collection, featuring the ever-delightful Miss Marple, even though it's more of a cameo appearance. In this story, it’s Raymond West’s turn to present a mystery to the detective club. If you need a refresher, Raymond is Miss Marple’s nephew and was the host of the club’s very first meeting. He shares a tale from his visit to a friend in Cornwall, a bold adventurer with a keen interest in uncovering sunken treasures. The big buzz in town? A large galleon that supposedly went down nearby, loaded with a massive haul of gold ingots has vanished! This has left many locals perplexed, including Raymond, since the gold was super heavy and nearly impossible to remove from the watery depths. Suspicion soon falls on a cantankerous and shady innkeeper who might be running a cove smuggling operation. Raymond also meets an inspector on the train to Cornwall who has been assigned to this case and as he spends more time in the village, it becomes more difficult to shake off the feeling of impending dread. Something sinister is going on here and Raymond soon finds himself unexpectedly involved with trying to help his friend track down the missing treasure. Toss in few other curious characters, a kidnapping gone awry, drop some red herrings and we’ve got ourselves a good ol’ fashioned Agatha Christie whodunnit mystery. 

True to form, Miss Marple listens quietly before cutting through the fluff with her trademark insight, especially when it comes to gardening. She also keenly points out Raymond’s flair for drama as a writer, which often clouds his judgment. Sometimes the simplest explanation really is the right one. 

While the big reveal at the end isn't particularly memorable, Christie’s storytelling is impeccable. Her ability to craft such a tightly woven mystery within such a compressed narrative space is quite impressive. The story is fast-paced with just enough intrigue to deliver that satisfying dopamine hit before you’re off to the next story.

A Harlem Tragedy by O. Henry

What happens to a dream deferred? 

A Harlem Tragedy by O. Henry has definitely not aged well and trying to take it seriously from a 21st-century perspective is almost impossible. It's a bizarre snapshot of the early 1900s, back when “real men” (read: Alpha males with questionable morals) showed their love by punching their wives in the face. Apparently, in this twisted logic, domestic violence was not only an expression of patriarchal control but also a romantic prelude to gift-giving. You know, just your classic “I hit you because I love you” kind of nonsense.

The plot centers around two married couples living in the same apartment building. The wives are friends, but one is jealous of the other. Not because her friend’s life is better, but because her husband routinely beats her up. Meanwhile, her own husband is a total bore who is more invested in reading the newspaper than giving her a shiner. She performs her domestic wifely duties of cooking and cleaning while he works all day. She becomes increasingly frustrated with their stagnant marriage, wishing that he would a real man and beat her senseless because then she’ll finally feel seen and loved.

The whole story is cringe-worthy and while the "twist ending" suggests that maybe it's supposed to be a satire about gender roles and masculinity, none of it landed for me. Moreover, since the story is set in Harlem, it raises another eyebrow: are these characters supposed to be black? It’s never made clear, but if they are, that would add another layer of clumsy, ignorant, tone-deaf storytelling to O. Henry’s résumé. This is a terrible, head-shaking, “what-did-I-just-read?” kind of mess. 

Save yourself the time and skip this one.

Eisenheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser

The Illusionist or the Prestige. Which do you prefer?

For a story packed with exposition and styled like a historical narrative, Eisenheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser somehow manages to stay utterly captivating from start to finish. Normally, that kind of heavy detail can bog down a short-story but in this case, it works pretty much flawlessly. Millhauser's brisk pacing keeps things moving at a steady clip with a constant sense of mystery and wonder swirling around Eisenheim, eastern Europe's most legendary illusionist at the dawn of the 20th century. 

Despite being written like a faux-biography, the story never comes across as a dull historical treatise. In fact, it embraces the illusion of truth so convincingly that you almost find yourself Googling whether Eisenheim was a real person. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t. That’s part of the story's magic though. Millhauser playfully blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that mirrors the very illusions Eisenheim performs. The result is a kind of literary sleight-of-hand that leaves you questioning art as illusory. 

The 2006 film adaptation, The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, often gets overlooked because it had the misfortune of coming out the same year as Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. At the time, I remember thinking The Illusionist was actually quite solid, even slightly underrated. The two films inevitably drew comparisons, but it never felt fair. Sure, they both feature magicians but also tell very different stories. The Prestige is a twisty rivalry thriller, while The Illusionist is more about mythmaking and the paradoxical nature of art as truth. 

Ultimately, Eisenheim the Illusionist is far more than a tale about a gifted magician at the height of his powers. Through Eisenheim’s spellbinding performances that seem to defy the laws of physics, the story explores how illusion can reveal deeper truths. Just as the magician manipulates human perception, Millhauser himself becomes a literary illusionist, constructing a narrative that plays with ambiguity, expectation, and the reader’s sense of what is real. In doing so, he invites us to consider that very good art is simialr to a magic trick, acting as both deception and revelation. This inherent paradox is what makes the story so haunting and enchanting at the same time, even after after the final curtain call.