SLOW STORIES
by Bette A.
Sixteen stories explore the shimmering and dangerous expanse between fantasy and reality.
Villages, monsters, vicious kings, witches, predictive human-behavior algorithms, and endlessly expanding houses fill the pages of A.’s short story collection. Part fable, part magical realism, and part technological dystopia (or utopia, depending on the narrator), these stories explore the real and the fantastical across past, present, and future. In the opening story, “The God in the Box,” a mysterious giant square box appears on the outskirts of a city. When the local residents, who believe a good God lives in the box, begin to fear that their desires can sway this God, they forsake the box—until a little boy makes a small but mighty decision. In “Guided,” a technological implant that flattens human emotion helps create a global “utopian socialist-anarchist-capitalist hybrid system” with two warring factions: the Guided and the UnGuided. Perhaps the strongest entry in the collection, this sharp and eerie story questions what people would be willing to give up to be able to live in a “perfect” world. Devastating and beautiful, “Für Elise” follows Elise, a talented musician, caregiver, and chronic people-pleaser as she watches her life—and all the paths she did not take. The story reminds us that “caring is not a wasted life” even as its ending offers a glimpse into a beautiful alternate ending for such a life. The collection is uneven, but the notion of the “other" is a thematic strength. There are stories where the other forces the characters to understand themselves more deeply, but there are also stories where the characters don’t realize the other is not quite what it seems until it’s too late. This collection reminds us that sometimes the other isn’t so different after all. As she balances the mythical, spiritual, and futuristic, A.’s ruminations on perception, power, technology, authenticity, authority, tradition, and community are unassumingly sharp.
An understated collection that feels both timeless and prophetic.