On "Road Hunting" by Lindsay Purves (3344 words) ****

A story works according to elements. In each piece, the elements are generally unique. An author choose a few items--a gun, a bottle, loneliness, and a beach--and then works them around each other, over and over, until the final flourish.

In "Road Hunting," Purves does just that. We have two characters, Daniel and Juliana--young and hopeful. We have a shared activity--the hunt for roadkill. And then we watch as those two characters dance around each other, hunting one another. Daniel is a guy with a reputation for being a bit of a manipulator, but he has plans, plans that will take him away from the town where he grew up and off to better places. Juliana isn't much different. She's a bit snooty, apparently, because she too has plans--to use her stronger education and better financial situation to go elsewhere. They hang together for the summer because they're friends, because they just need to be there for one another. They aren't in love. Or are they? Or are they even friends? Read the story here at Anderbo.

On "Pool" by Corey Campbell (2702 words) ***

There's something haunting about Corey Campbell's "Pool." It's one of those stories in which not much seems to be happening but which also seems somehow to stick one's skin, sliding over you like water, so that it's not so easy to get off. The piece centers on a young woman named Darla who is fairly new in a relationship with Jon, a man who is good enough for now but who she has no intentions of sticking with. Trevor and Mandy are friends, married, and even younger than Darla. There's an obvious metaphor here regarding "taking the plunge." Darla doesn't want to swim, doesn't want to go in the pool, but it appears that she lives her entire life that way--never willing to totally commit or to dare. Until . . . Read the story here at Anderbo.

On "I Have Cancer, I Have Cancer" by Jody Madala (1461 words) ***

I have yet to come across something I didn't think was good on Anderbo. I'm sure it will happen at some point, but for now, I marvel at how the taste the editors and I seem to share. This latest story on Anderbo uses the second person. I am also a sucker for the second person. I think most people find second person pretentious or gimmicky. Perhaps, the fact that Choose Your Own Adventure novels were so much a part of my reading when I was young has made the second person seem simply natural to me, a great way to thrust me into the character's life, to make me feel part of the action. In Jody Madala's story, I'm a young, beautiful woman. There are worse things one could be. I'm a woman who does what so many other young women do. I'm kind of a cliche. And yet, I'm me--and those clichés are not clichés when it's me, my actual life. And I'm growing older, and I'm going out less, and I'm wishing I could hold on to what I have, what I had. And, well, the title tells it all. Read the story here.

On "The Rules of Urban Living" by Kara Janeczko (2354 words) ****

A woman, a man, a firefighter. Sex sounds. A burned esophagus. Desire. So many stories are about desire--not too many about esophaguses. This one keeps the desire buried deep within it; the esophagus plays only a minor roll, well, the burned one anyway. If we think of the esophagus as an organ from which sounds come, then there's plenty of it. There are plenty of sounds in this piece. A woman obsesses on the sounds her neighbors make, the sounds she makes, the sounds she and her boyfriend used to make. Mark Richard, in a class I took of his, once described stories as obsessions. They deal in a handful of things, maybe fewer, and work them until they are exhausted. And that's what Janeczko does here. It adds up to a nice treat. Read the story at Anderbo.