Flashes of the Other World

Flashes of the Other World
Julie Ann Shapiro
Pulpbits
Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories
Reviewed by Lee Gooden

Julie Ann Shapiro’s new e-book, Flashes of the Other World is exactly what the title implies, flashes, glimpses, sneak-peeks around corners and through keyholes of discerned reality. Flashes of the Other World is an eighty-six page anthology of short-short stories, and prose poems written specifically for online literary journals and print magazines that focus on what is called Flash-Fiction, Short-Fiction or Post Card Fiction; stories usually under a thousand words. The problem with Flash Fiction is that it is difficult to create a well rounded character that stimulates reader empathy with such a small amount of space, so most stories are written in the first person. Flash Fiction writers tend to go for Stream of Consciousness and so-called advent-garde writing, purposely pushing contrivances, and forcing shock-value for the shock itself and not for character development. They write about “jump-off-the-page” subjects like rape, incest, repressed memories of molestation, and insanity. Topics that are as irresistible as the cliché image of a crowd at a traffic accident that just can’t help but look at the injured and bloody victims.
Not all Flash Fiction is made up of gimmickry and tricks. Writing good and successful Flash Fiction is more difficult than one might expect. There are some excellent practitioners of the art. Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Mark Strand, David Foster Wallace and Stuart Dybec were included in a 1992 W.W. Norton anthology of Flash Fiction, called Flash Fiction. According to one of the anthologies editors, Tom Hazuka, in 1998 it had sold over 22,000 copies and was about to reprinted for the fifth time.
Julie Ann Shapiro’s Flashes of the Other World is a series of hits and misses. Some of her stories like The Vacant Tub, The Color of Boulders, Red Dot On the Wall, Don’t Mix Carrots and Peas, the frighteningly prophetic, Blue Moon No Carbs, the brilliant Looking Glass, the Kafkaesque The Antennae and creepy Lunch Not the Typical Fare more than make up for the short comings.
Blue Moon No Carbs is a futuristic story where everything unhealthy is outlawed. It would be extremely funny if it wasn’t so nightmarishly “realistic” and possibly a sign of things to come. Shapiro writes, “I break open the French bread and take a bite of it, ignoring the gunshots-I continue chewing the bread and break open a bag of Cheetos. It rips in half. I throw it high into the air, the same with the next bag and the next. It’s raining Cheetos when they take me away.”

The opening story, The Vacant Tub is a kind of ghost story, but not your average around the corner variety boo-fest.. The Vacant Tub is about a man coming to grips with the death of his son (Possibly, he murdered his son by drowning him, or perhaps the boy accidentally drowned). The boy doesn’t realize that he is dead and the man’s guilt is haunting. The despair comes off the page in palpable waves. Shapiro writes in the opening paragraph, “The ghost of past baths sat soaking up rays on the front lawn. Suds of yesteryear dripped off the porcelain surface of the tub.”
What stands out the most about Flashes of the Other World is that even the stories and prose poems that Shapiro doesn’t quite pull off are written well (except for a few typos here and there). Shapiro should consider combining her stories with a dramatic performance or make a recording, or reading them aloud herself, because there is something organic in her writing that would be enhanced by a spoken-word artist or an actor breaking the third and fourth walls of mind, paper and a given audience.