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.