On "Small Town Seventeen--An American Triptych" by Ann Garvin (768 words)***

Madison Smartt Bell's Zero dB and Other Stories has at least two of these--stories split into thirds. In his collection, as I recall, the tryptichs are more images that work off of one another than pieces that one can make sense of in terms of plot. Garvin's short short has that feeling as well--simple moments from this one girl's life, as she prepares to go off to college and what that means regarding men (good and bad). Read it through a second time, and the plot emerges, the fact that this is all one night, that the first tryptich is about . . . But why tell you all this when you can read it for yourself here at the Del Sol Review.