Rebecca Curtis, "Solicitation"

These are the people in my neighborhood who knock on my door because they want something.

(from Twenty Grand)

Well, Rebecca Curtis is officially off the deep end but at least there's water in the pool. I can't be sure if that makes sense. But as weird and fun as this story was, the sing-songy storytelling and smuggy repetition thing can get tiresome.

Rebecca Curtis, "The Alpine Slide"

A girl takes her first job working for a charming man at an alpine slide.

(from Twenty Grand)

We were not excellent workers, mostly because we were stunned by the pleasure of one another’s company. Soon our legs became scraped from lifting sleds, and our arms grew sore and then muscular. Our skin turned gold. Our fifteen-minute breaks stretched to thirty. Instead of half price, our snacks were free, because the snack-stand crew, a lower echelon of workers who were trapped in grease and darkness, offered them to us that way.

Besides being sharply told — it's drunk with tactile images and memorable moments — this
story speaks a grim truth the world needs to know: Alpine slides are horrific non-fun death traps running with blood. Obviously, uh, I could say more about this story that I enjoyed very much. But tonight's about reading. You want some insightful bloggery? Read it and write it up yourself.

Rebecca Curtis, "The Witches"

Ruth borrows her stepdad's boat on prom night.

(from Twenty Grand)

Wow. This one blew me a away. There's a key plot thing left up in the air, I won't spoil it by saying what it might be except to night that the reader would have to make a dark assumption or two, but it really would change everything. Anyway. Awesome.

Rebecca Curtis, “Monsters”

Some trees turn into monsters and want to eat a member of the family.

(from Twenty Grand)

This is another freaky story, almost allegoricalesqueish, but not really. And while it never feigns depth, it’s pretty engrossing. Poor Ellie.

Rebecca Curtis, “The Wolf at the Door”

Don’t mess with the wolf.

(from Twenty Grand)

The wolf isn’t really a wolf, though he does have some of the supernatural viciousness you might expect from a fairytale villain. This was a short allegorical thing that I wasn’t sucked into enough to analyze. It reminded me of a certain Mountain Goats record.

Rebecca Curtis, "Twenty Grand"

Mom loses the old Armenian coin her mom gave her.

(from Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love and Money)

Our driveway was a dirt road that wound through a field. It was often lined by eight-foot banks—which I climbed on my way home from school—with teetering, sand-specked bucket-lumps at their tops. Sporadically, a kid came with a tractor. When he left, the lane was clear. But overnight the wind swept snow across the shelf, up over the banks, and into the road. By morning the drifts were as deep as if the driveway hadn’t been plowed at all. Every day, my mother called the kid, who was slow and did the easy jobs in town first, to try to get him to come. Then she shoveled a path to the woodpile and one to the car.

Damn. This one's a total heartbreaker. I mean, it's funny sometimes and the ever bleaker situations the characters find themselves in ring true right to the bone. But ouch. My heart.
Read it here.

Alex Mindt, "Male of the Species"

This is West Texas, you just can't fail the star quarterback.

(from Male of the Species)

Like many of the stories in Alex Mindt's collection, the title track is a cinematic, classicky rumination on manhood as a concept. The unwritten rules are all but written out, especially in this one where the husband seems to be too smart and/or idealistic for the real world. And the real world is harsh, what with all the irrational pressures and unfaithfulnesses and so on. But you have to stay tuned because sometimes the guy will surprise you.

Jana Martin, "Russian Lover"

A check and apology letters to her ex-mother-in-law.

(from Russian Lover and Other Stories)

I figured after reading so much Jana Martin over the last week or so, i figured it was time to give the title track a spin. It's a relatively long one, and a bit more conceptual that the others. The letters are well-composed but not so writerly (except for the conspicuous word "hale") that I felt like it was Martin's words, and not her narrator's, that I was reading. This character is charming and witty, and sometimes shows a dark side. It comes from a place of hurt; she's over her husband's betrayal in some ways but there's a per of her that, understandably can't deal with all the loose ends it created. Martin really really kicked ass with this one. Although she rarely digs deep in the poetry bag, some of her sentences are stunning and worthy of immediate, repeat readings.

Alex Mindt, "Reception"

A boy tries to set his dad up with the divorcée across the street.

(from Male of the Species)

But why does he want his dad to date Mrs. Castagna, to marry her? To soften his father up. But also, to ease the burden of his part in his mother's death. "Reception" works so well at creating its own little world. Despite the fact that this story owes its existence to a Ryan Adams song, it's a gem, a keeper, a memorable reading experience. It's not so much the plot, though it's sort of classic and surprising at the same time, it's the way it's told and the details that flesh it out.
I really wish I could find you a link to this one.

Alex Mindt, "Ruby"

Her dad and his dog are running on borrowed time.

(from Male of the Species)

Well, the dog is anyway. But she's a hopelessly sick and loyal creature. Dad's a monster. This story was pretty much nauseating from the get go. It was short and I was glad for that.

Jana Martin, "Work"

A painter tries to reconcile the the dark green with the overall picture.

(from Russian Lover and Other Stories)

This is a shorty, told in second person. The painter's mind, your mind, sort of races, even as time seems to pass quickly. I read it twice because it was easy.

Jana Martin, "I'm Not Quite Finished Yet"

A sick woman leaves this earthly plane.

(from Russian Lover and Other Stories)

If they try to charge me for this I will protest. “I never asked to come here,” I’ll tell them. And this business about letting go is a crock. Here I am sitting here, luckily I can put my feet up on the chair across from me to help the circulation, and I am thinking, I can’t help it, I am wondering, Who is going to do the bills? I had everything organized. I had all the paperwork in blue files. I had notes everywhere, only blue, and they were coded. I was so proud of coming up with that code myself. But I never told anyone what it all meant. And now what?

This one's sort of disguised as a what-is-heaven's-bureaucracy-like riff-fest — what's the real deal with halos and wings? what happens to our old concerns — but really it's a thinker. Is the woman dead, or just letting her mind wander in an illness-addled haze? And is heaven what you make it? Is it even heaven, or just another minor hassle? Does your mind wander across your own history, nudging you to judge yourself? This story is so gentle and whimsical, I couldn't help but read it quickly and with a bit of a smile.
You can read it here.

Bay Anapol, "A Stone House"

Kit knows she will be all alone soon.

(from The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007)

The beach is crowded with other mothers, the kind Kit yearns for: younger mothers in tight bathing suits cutting red marks in their jowly thighs,mothers playing mahjong with bits of damp tile, mothers lighting cigarettes and smoothing chalk cream on peeling noses.

Her mom is sick who left her alone on the beach as a kid(maybe). Her boyfriend's a passionate but untrustworthy flake. So Kit, whose insecurities often lead to her to imagine the worst and recall her family's sad history. Seems to me, she's kind of a Debbie Downer who's had it better than she realizes. But, whatever, it's your life, Kit. People deal how they deal. Read a little bit of this small, serpentine, imaginative story here, on this ugly weird page.

J.M. Tyree, "The First Book of the Chronicles of the Cola War"

The Pepsi vs. Coke story, written in Old Testament language.

(from American Short Fiction, Issue 37)

Kind of one-note, but then, how long would you want the joke to go on? The formula is pretty well-established: Get in, be funny, get out. Still, Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Pepsi Jazz should have had a part in there somewhere. As a destroying angel, perhaps.

Alex Mindt, "Stories of the Hunt"

Dad takes the kid on his first hunting trip.

(from Male of the Species)

Funny thing is, like the boy, I was really slow in catching on to the dad's ruse. I mean, we both knew something was up, but couldn't quite put it together. Clever but subtle and with thoughtful, straightforward prose, this story kept me pasted to the page. There's some solid psychology at work in these characters, if you ask me. The father and son are three-dimensional, likable in that all humans are likable. But not bad in the way that some people are bad.

Jana Martin, "Goodbye John Denver"

Rita is struck by a loopy adrenaline disorder after a car accident.

(from Russian Lover and Other Stories)

Wow, this is a strange one. Basically, this traumatic accident causes Rita to blurt silly non sequiturs, which is sometimes pretty funny and occasionally sad or tiresome. And, though I'm somehow displeased that this popped into my brain, sometimes Rita's rampant loopiness feels like an excuse for a writer to turn stream-of-consciousness into zingers and giggles. But as soon as John Denver is brought into the picture, the story finds its gravity again. And the pages fly on by.
Couldn't find a link to pass along, except for this poem by Susan Hooper, also called Goodbye John Denver. (Scroll a bit.)

Helen Simpson, "The Door"

A woman needs a new door after a break-in.

(from In the Driver's Seat)

Organizing a new back door after the break-in was more complicated than you might imagine.

That's a cool first line. This simple story only rarely strays into details that don't involve the purchasing or installing the door. Everything else — our narrator's history, the break-in story — is only hinted at. You get the feeling those things are interesting and complicated, and maybe terrible, but there's a sort of peace to the proceedings. The simple act of having a new door installed is as soothing and reassuring for the reader as it is for the narrator.

Jana Martin, "Hope"

She's gonna take the bus down to Florida and get clean.

(from Russian Lover and Other Stories)

Why does everyone official throw all their officialese at me, and why does he bother saying the line is yellow since in this light, like everything else, it's white?

This is a hell of a head to be in. The narrator is at once trustworthy and suspicious-making. She has moments of clarity interrupted by poetic creeks of consciousness, tiny floods where her meaning is just about to get lost, where she almost loses you. But if she does, it's only for a second and it makes sense to get lost. This is not a character who's got her brain screwed on tight. But she's beautiful in a way, too human not to ignite a little pity or admiration or, yeah, hope in the reader. Of course, things might actually be hopeless but there are degrees of hopelessness.