On "The Third Way" by Tamara Kaye Sellman (1768 words) ***

I'm not particularly keen on politics overtly making their way into fiction, but then again, can politics ever not make their way into fiction? Even their supposed absence (if that is possible) is a political statement of sorts, an argument perhaps for the status quo. And as a novel I recently read shows--that novel being Romano-Lax's The Spanish Bow--sometimes even though one may want to simply write a story or play music or draw a picture, forces around will often conspire to use what one does for its own political ends. Is silence then the only option? But is silence then also a political statement?

These things being on my mind at the time that I read this story, I couldn't help but be drawn to some of the questions that Romano-Lax's book raised. And I didn't even know at the time that I was reading a "political" story, not until I was halfway in. I thought I was reading a disaster story--with a unique twist, the reason the story is compelling: the piece is told backward. But maybe disaster stories and political stories are the same. I fear that too often they are. Our desire for power over others generally spells disaster for someone else somewhere, as it does here. Read the story at Terrain.org.