On "When the Evening Reaches Here" by Jessica Harwell (3599 words) ****

This one is a brutal story about alcohol, about alcoholics, about love, of a sort--or inertia. What is it that keeps us in relationships gone bad, even when other opportunities arise? Is it a concern for the other person? Is it the safety of what we know? Is it that we can't break away from memories of better times, that splitting might suggest such times weren't real? Is it that what we want is not always what is good for us? This is one sad piece, one that hints at a life that isn't going to change anytime soon for the better. In a sense, Harwell's story is mystifying in that regard, how it keeps one satiated, even as it proffers no elements of transformation--and few prospect. Read the story for yourself here at Identity Theory.

On "How We Made a Difference" by Joseph Bates (2495 words) ***

A friend of mine once dismissed Joyce's Ulysses as simply political writing. I'm not sure if writing about politics in fiction necessarily means that the work doesn't have any literary merit, but I am prone to taking a harsher eye to a text whose political propaganda is obvious on the page.

Bates's story is one that definitely puts politics front and center. I'm writing about it because it made me laugh, because it was, as Henry James describes good literature, "interesting." And is Bates's political agenda all that clear? Sure, it's easy to take swipes at conservatives in a forum such a story, but at the same time, the text is so over the top that one wonders if maybe there isn't also a certain swipe at the other side of the political spectrum as well--if the point isn't, perhaps, that we've lost our way in all the political turmoil with regard to what makes people people and what makes a nation a nation. Nah. Read the story here at Identity Theory and decide for yourself.

On "Rot" by Laura Ellen Scott (845 words) ***

Scott's opening line kept me reading and reading. In this short piece, she piles on sentence after sentence, line after line, each one making me want more. I'm not completely sure of the plot, but here it doesn't seem to matter. Good writing will do that--keep me entranced with the details, with the voice. Or maybe I just like reading about children of murderers. Maybe you will too. Read it here at Identity Theory.

On "The Floor Champion of Foosball" by Carrie Hall (2859 words) ****

I admit it. I was first taken in by this story because of the title--specifically because of the word foosball. I'd never been much of a fan--I always preferred air hockey growing up. But when I moved to Athens half a decade ago, my friend Al and most of my other acquaintances were big into foosball, and as a result a certain adoration for the game budded within me. Sure, I'd still take air hockey or shuffleboard over the other, but the fact is that when Al and Aaron and Julien and company stopped playing, there was a small hole in my bar world.

So the story . . . Set on a psych ward in some place we don't know, the way pysch wards often are worlds unto themselves, this story manages to convey the essence of four very interesting and disturbed characters, as well as the setting itself. For our narrator, foosball is her way out--or maybe perhaps more accurately just another way for her to lord herself over the others. I can't say this piece makes me hope for the white-suited men to take me away anytime soon, but I suppose that's a good thing--you know, that I want to continue to be normal, rational, stable. . . . Read the story here.