On "Kingdom of the Jellyfish" by Thomas Andrew Green (878 words) ***

Many a short is essentially an extended metaphor, and that's what Green does wonderfully here. The tale is about one family that comes to live with another, about how it imposes itself for a brief time and then disappears as if it had never been. It's about how we all do that, all us living beings, even the jellyfish. Read the story here at Apple Valley Review.

On "Orchids" by Lydia Williams (1288 words) ***

I'm not sure why I find this story so subtly sad. There's a woman and her husband--a woman who works hard to become a better person, a husband who barely tries at all. And yet, the husband comes off seeming more capable. The woman, by contrast, keeps slipping into old routines, into, for example, a binge drinking habit. Perhaps what is so sad here is that the lack of moving forward--the story itself is light on plot--seems so akin to my achieving of goals. It seems more like one is given a standard personality and mode of behavior and no matter how hard one tries, the old ways inevitably prevail. We can never become the person we want to become. Is the fight worth it? Are the people who don't even bother better? Happier? Or are they even bigger losers? Not that this story is going to help answer those questions, but you can read it anyway, here at Apple Valley Review.

On "How to Leave" by Kerri Quinn (2810 words) ****

Good fiction is supposed to be about the details, the specifics. What's nice about this piece is that it does just the opposite--it remains vague. It's the vagueness here that makes the story so effective. Sure, there are details--don't get me wrong. But the story is vague insofar as we don't really get a keen sense of why the narrator feels the way that she does, just as we often don't have a keen sense of why we feel the way we do. We open cans of dog food for the pet. We walk in snow without a jacket. We circle random ads for things we might like to buy in the classifieds and then never follow up. We do these little things. But what do they all mean or add up to? Who knows? Read the story here at the Apple Valley Review.