On "How to Talk to Children About Death" by Andrew Roe (1060 words) ***

The title pretty much says everything here. Roe explores the difficulties of explaining what death is and what happens after it to someone just coming onto the scene in terms of life. I remember, as a four- or five-year-old, one time in the bathroom telling my mom I didn't want to die. I obviously was thinking about it too. It scared me. Now, older, I think I'm more scared about how I die and what I leave behind--not that I still don't want to die. Read the story here at Fwriction.

On "So Then Pam Wakes Up and Bobby's in the Shower, Acting Like Nothing Happened" by Emily Koon (442 words) ***

One has to like this story if only for the title. I love how it spools out to a story of its own, one that one recognizes once one's into the narrative itself if one is of a certain age. The tale here is one of laziness and expectation and desire, the way that we can fall into a rut and how that can wear away at the people around us. I'm reminded a bit of Raymond Carver's work, only here the scale is even much smaller--but similar characters. You can read the story here at Fwriction.

On "City Girls" by LiAnn Yim (4116 words) ****

I love this seeming randomness of this story, the way we start off with this absurd idea that there's a man going around town cutting off women's hair, that this is terrifying, a reason to avoid salons. I thought I was reading some kind of absurdist story, and then, no, I wasn't. I was reading a story about the kind of games, the kind of obsessions, the kind of misunderstandings, that children sometimes have, the kind that make me wonder, for example, now whether my memories of the 210 freeway in Pasadena not being finished until I was about age four and about that trench being used, for a time, to catch floodwater are simply my child fantasies confused with real history of the place I grew up. Then Yim wanders off into fights between friends and fallings out and some growing up that happens and all of this somehow once again brought back to hair, which is what's important to these girls. Read the story here at Fwriction.